I’ve about decided that a full book could be written regarding just about every produced movie – Lord knows there’s always enough behind the scenes drama to fill a daytime soap. But I love it. Who was supposed to be in what? Who wrote the script? That stuff. The success of X movie produced Y.

OLIVE FILMS

And here’s a story about a Robert Redford motorcycle picture called Little Fauss and Big Halsey, recently released for the first time on home video by Olive Films.

Al Ruddy came to Hollywood in the early 60s and as a young pup sold what has become a classic sitcom called Hogan’s Heroes. Ruddy and Charles Eastman wrote the script for Little Fauss and sold it to Paramount with a then hot director named Sidney Furie (who was bankable because of The Ipcress File and The Naked Runner). Redford was brought on board in the process as was my friend and lifelong Ruddy partner Gray Frederickson. [Read on here...]

Little Fauss was a hit, released just after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was kept on budget and caused no problems for the studio.

Now that Ruddy and Frederickson had a name in the business they partnered with screenwriter Peter Bart, then a Paramount executive, on a 20th Century Fox film called Making It. It was during the production of this film that Ruddy and Frederickson received word from Paramount that their next assignment would be a film which, like Little Fauss would need to be done on the cheap. The Godfather.

So, the successful production of Little Fauss and Big Halsey was perhaps the most influential factor for Paramount to trust Ruddy and Frederickson to shepherd what could be the greatest studio picture ever made.

Here’s another goodie, and the reason Little Fauss is a must own – its score was written and recorded by Johnny Cash, and Gray spent a week or so at the music giant’s house as the score was recorded and talks as if it were just another week in the park. I’d still be there.

Olive also recently started a new line of Blu-rays called Olive Signature. Highlighting cult favorites, time-honored classics, and under-appreciated gems, each Olive Signature edition boasts a pristine audio and video transfer, newly designed cover art, and an abundance of exciting bonus material. The first two releases were High Noon and Johnny Guitar, followed by Orson Welles’ Macbeth.

WARNER ARCHIVE

Warner Archive is already ahead of the curve when it comes to holiday shopping. It’s been a joy to watch the movie buffs here release their gems to the world.

First, Warner Archive is the only place for Blu versions of the timeless Bogart Bacall movies such as Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key Largo. Here are some more of their suggested gift items:

Charlie Chan 3-Film Collection – This trio of classic Charlie Chan mysteries made by Monogram pictures may give us two different Charlies (Sidney Toler and Roland Winters), but both styles of super sleuth must tackle truly draconian mysteries and murder. Includes The Red Dragon (1945), The Feathered Serpent (1948) and The Sky Dragon (1949). The first title stars Toler, who took over from the original Chan Warner Oland and the last two stars the final actor to plan Chan in the series Winters.

FitzPatrick Travel Talks: Volume 1 (1934-46) – For over 20 years on behalf of MGM, writer/producer/director/narrator James A. FitzPatrick traveled the world with his camera providing simple, straight forward looks at what was best and most interesting in a location and allowing a generation of movie-goers to experience the world from their local movie house. In this first collection, selected from over a decade of travels, he visits locales like pre-war Tokyo, post-revolution Ireland, street-car-connected Los Angeles, pre-occupation Paris and the sleepy lumber city of Seattle, gateway to wild Alaska!

FitzPatrick Travel Talks: Volume 2 (1934-45) – In this second volume, a collection of 60 of James FitzPatrick’s famed Technicolor travelogues, we once again crisscross the globe, in the years before World War II: Holland, Japan, and Zion Canyon, along with poignant portraits of life in Spain, Egypt and Australia. With the war limiting his travel options, FitzPatrick narrows his lens to bring the sights and sounds of the Americas vividly to life during the early ’40s, from Ontario to Massachusetts to Venezuela.

Forbidden Hollywood: Volume X (1931-33) – The tenth and final volume containing a quintet of controversial pre-Code classics. Lionel Barrymore stars in W.S. Van Dyke’s Guilty Hands, co-starring Kay Francis, from Oklahoma. Next Warren William is crowned the pre-Code King with his breakout performance in James Flood & Elliott Nugent’s The Mouthpiece. Then Edward Sutherland spills the Secrets of the French. Warren William follows with Howard Bretherton and William Keighley’s acclaimed biopic The Match King and Barbara Stanwyck sizzles as a spouse torn between love and country in Archie Mayo’s Ever in My Heart.

Monogram Cowboy Collection: Volume 9 – Johnny Mack Brown (1946-48) – Cowboy king Johnny Mack Brown became the first name in westerns while riding high for Monogram Pictures in the mid-’40s. After retiring his Nevada Jack persona, he went on to battle the bad guys as Johnny Mack Brown. The nine sagas contained here cover this transition as Johnny plays a succession of character variations on his own name (Johnny Macklin, Johnny Mack, Johnny Mackey) before finally saddling up as Johnny Mack Brown. Collection contains The Gentleman from Texas (1946), Trailing Danger, Land of the Lawless, The Law Comes to Gunsight, Code of the Saddle, Flashing Guns (1947), Frontier Agent, The Fighting Ranger and The Sheriff of Medicine Bow. (1948).

Personal privilege here – Warner Archive also recently released on of my favorite “sleeper” films Time After Time with Malcom McDowell and Mary Steenbergen. This movie also has a precious score by Miklos Rosza.

INTRADA

Since we mentioned movie music, as we shall more and more as time goes by, the great folks at Intrata are always interested in all things Rosza. This record store/CD producer offers many of the composer’s rarest scores – like Desert Fury and Five Graves to Cairo and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

New titles from Intrada include a two cd package of Danny Elfman’s wonderful, overlooked score from Dick Tracy, Basil Poledouris’ The Blue Lagoon, John Barry’s The Last Valley and The Day of the Locust, Alex North’s Cheyenne Autumn, Henry Mancini’s Silver Streak, W.C. Fields and Me and Santa Clause: The Movie and an unprecedented six cd box of Elmer Bernstein’s majestic score of The Ten Commandments.

CINELICIOUS PICS

No less than The New York Times hailed the re release of a 1960 sex crime thriller called Private Property, a film that “teeters on the edge of morbidity before its galvanizing climax.” The film, once considered lost and now newly restored played theaters in New York last spring to other rave reviews.

News of this picture would have been enough. I can think of similar discoveries in years past like Murder By Contract and The Plot Against Harry, but Private Property has one element none others do – the casting of the essential character actor Warren Oates in a lead role.

You know Warren Oates, right? He played character parts in The Wild Bunch and In the Heat of the Night and Two Lane Blacktop while handling leading roles in Dillinger, filmed in Oklahoma City, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Cockfighter. Oates was a cult actor from the word go who never failed to be anything less than entertaining.

Private Property is now available in a stunning Blu-ray Cinelicious Pics.

COHEN FILM COLLECTION

In the same vein, we are also about to get our first Blu-ray of the restored Sudden Fear, a lost RKO noir gem with Joan Crawford turned loose from both MGM and Warner Brothers and on the verge of making some of her most entertaining movies like Johnny Guitar, Queen Bee, Autumn Leaves and, eventually, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

TIME LIFE VIDEO

Bob Hope, the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, was above all a patriotic American dedicated to our troops around the world. His star-studded USO Christmas shows brought a taste of home to servicemen and women scattered thousands of miles from their families. Bob rang in the Christmas season with the biggest stars in Hollywood along with major figures from the worlds of sports and music, and cracked jokes with his celebrity pals and presidents alike.

Thanks for the Memories, a six DVD set from Time Life Home video features 13 specials from Bob’s career, spanning five decades with dozens of celebrity guests. Highlights include:

The best of the bloopers from 30 years of Bob’s shows with George Burns, Sammy Davis Jr., Angie Dickinson, Phyllis Diller, Burt Reynolds, Don Rickles, Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Taylor, Mr. T, John Wayne and others.

Time Life is also bringing back to viewers the carefree genius of Johnny Carson with The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson: The Vault Series. This collection features Johnny and the inimitable Tonight Show crew in full episodes fresh from Carson’s vaults – including commercials!

These packages feature some of the best and most requested episodes from over 30 years and 4,000 shows – including material not seen by the public since the original broadcasts! Among the many highlights are the 10th and 11th anniversary shows and Johnny’s birthday episodes, a week of shows from March 1976, visits from Carnac the Magnificent and the Mighty Carson Art Players, and Johnny singing Rhinestone Cowboy astride a donkey.

Carson is also at his best bantering with famous friends including Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Richard Pryor, Muhammad Ali, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Sean Connery, John Denver, Peter Fonda, Charlton Heston, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Paul McCartney, Burt Reynolds, Don Rickles, Orson Welles, and many others. Hours of highly-entertaining bonus features are also included on the multi-disc sets, and feature bonus monologues, in-depth interviews, and additional clips with Lucille Ball, James Brown, Rodney Dangerfield, David Letterman, Joan Embery and her wild animals, the beloved Aunt Blabby and a Hollywood stuntwoman demonstration.

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson: The Vault Series retail DVD configurations includes a single disc release (two shows), a three disc collector’s set (six shows + nearly an hour of bonus features) a six disc collector’s set (12 shows + two hours of exclusive extras) and a 12-disc deluxe edition collector’s set (24 shows + over four hours of exclusive extras; $99.95 SRP).

TWILIGHT TIME

It seems that our friends at Twilight Time never stop, planning and plotting in their cave of rare pictures that need their special touch. Here’s what’s coming soon.

For December look for Stardust Memories, a top five Woody Allen at my house, Bogart, Gardner and an Oscar Winning Edmond O’Brien in The Barefoot Contessa, The Keys to the Kingdom, with Gregory Peck, 1960’s The Three Worlds of Gulliver, and Nicholas Nickleby from 2002.

In January there’s a Jane Fonda double feature Stanley and Iris with DeNiro directed by Martin Ritt and Comes a Horseman with an Oscar nominated Richard Farnsworth directed by Alan Pakula. There’s also Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn in the cult classic Two for the Road, and a 3-D presentation of The Mad Magician with Vincent Price and some 3-D shorts.

And, as I can’t be sure of a publishing date, the group is having a huge sale through early December.

KINO LORBER

Absolution is one of those lost pictures that seems to turn up in the dollar bin in thrift stores. Finally Kino Lorber has given the film the restoration it deserves. Written by the legendary Anthony Shaffer, of Sleuth fame, the picture stars a late career (nee fantastic) Richard Burton as a priest in the middle of murder. By all means take the opportunity to see this picture. Also from Kino Lorber see Back Roads with Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, directed by no less than Martin Ritt, two war pictures – Ambush Bay, with Hugh O’Brien and Mickey Rooney and Beachhead, with Tony Curtis and Frank Lovejoy and the great Charles Chrichton directing Peter Sellers and Robert Morley in The Battle of the Sexes.

AND FINALLY…

I have to close on one of the most bittersweet notes of my life. Leon Russell died very recently. It’s a tragic because he can no longer create and I’ll never again see him perform, however, as he has been my favorite musical singer and songwriter since I was in high school, I have every commercial and some non commercial recordings he made, saw him in concert no less than 35 times and got him to perform at Governor Mary Fallin’s inaugural here in Oklahoma that I produced. He was a proud Oklahoman. And we’re all heartbroken.

Do me a favor – if you’re unfamiliar, find a song on YouTube or something and play it right now. And say “this song’s for you Leon.”

I think it’s time we caught up. Walking outside during this Oklahoma summer is like tasting something after it’s been in the microwave about eight minutes. The heat and stupidity started even before Memorial Day and has not abated. It’s like we’re living on Mars – I’ve been pricing those spacesuits which protected Matt Damon.

But thank goodness for the movies. Especially the kind one watches in the comfort of one’s own home. Let’s discuss.

Here’s a serious complaint – as I learned over the years, watching a great film is a multi-sensory experience – you see, you listen, you emote. And for me, always a major component of that experience is the music score. For those who pay attention, music is usually the heart of the movie – name a classic up through about 1990 or so for which you can’t hum a main theme. Or name a dud or two with a score that is better than the picture. [Read on here...]

I said 1990 because that’s when movie viewers such as I watched as film scores started their descent toward ineffectuality, actually where we stand today. Try to hum a melody from Batman v Superman or Spotlight or even a modern classic like The Lobster. Even toward the end of the golden age, there were those composing terrific scores – John Barry did Dances with Wolves (a score far better than the film) Ennio Morricone added luster to The Untouchables, and Jerry Goldsmith thumped over the opening credits of both Total Recall and Basic Instinct.

Come on, other than Randy Newman, name three terrific film composers working today? You can’t.

That’s why a company like Intrada is so essential for true film buffs. They find scores from classic movies, use modern recording techniques to bring the ear maximum pleasure, then release them to the waiting stereo systems for the sheer pleasure.

Here’s a case file study from yours truly – Olive Films, of which we’ll talk much more, recently released a slate from the terrific, later work of Otto Preminger. The other night I sat down to view the Blu-ray of Hurry Sundown. Now, we all know this picture is a little hokey and Michael Caine was totally miscast, but, compared to our choices in the local bijou, HS is solid and totally commands interest. Plus Olive’s transfer to Blu-ray is eye popping.

I’d known the name Hugo Montenegro for years – look him up on Spotify and he’s right up there with Andre Kostelanetz, Percy Faith, those kinds of guys who would worked under contact with record companies to arrange and record pop songs and put them on disc. I remember specifically having a 45 of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme by Hugo Montenegro, although, of course, it was written by Ennio Morricone.

For Hurry Sundown, I was surprised to see that Montenegro actually composed the score and that it was terrific – after the movie I went to YouTube and found some cuts. And also found that he had also scored the Duke’s The Undefeated, Sinatra’s Lady in Cement, and several Dean Martin/Matt Helm movies.

About a week later I got an email from Intrada announcing a new release of the score on CD, so I of course had to have it to feed my iPod and have listened lots since.

What was your first soundtrack album? Mine was one of two – True Grit, because that was and is a bellwether film experience for me and Viva Max because, if you’ll recall from other musings I’ve posted, we watched it filming. I also remember The Sting because it was an early purchase with my own funds – from, believe it or not, giving piano lessons.

But then soundtracks were what I bought. I especially loved Henry Mancini, whose biography is a must read if you want to know the business side of scoring, composing, recording and music publishing. Of course, Oklahoma Crude was an early favorite, but I knew Pink Panther, and Baby Elephant Walk, and Peter Gunn and so on.

Intrada has lovingly released two of my favorite Mancini scores. First there’s The Great Waldo Pepper, a George Roy Hill/Redford picture that was a little odd in its day but which had an almost military march sort of feeling that’s pretty catchy. The other is Mancini’s score for Silver Streak, that I don’t remember being recorded before – or maybe I just didn’t have it. It’s a fantastic companion to the movie, one of Hank’s best – all railroad themed and fun.

Another favorite was Jerry Goldsmith, who, actually like Mancini, I was able to meet when I grew up. I remember distinctly seeing Goldsmith’s name on Planet of the Apes, as a kid but of course it was unknown to me at the time that those percussive sounds were the benchmark of a landmark movie score. I also had the Patton album and, I’m sure, others, but it was Chinatown that played on my turntable until the grooves wore off.

Intrada has released a total, revelatory soundtrack of Chinatown that offers what might be the loveliest, most appropriate film noir soundtrack ever.

Go to www.intrada.com and see for yourself. Their inventory is not just for the classics.

Olive Films & Catalog Indie Blu-ray Releases

A real find this month from Olive is a 1984 made for Showtime feature called The Ratings Game, directed by and starring Danny Devito, which is a poor man’s version of Network but has its own share of laughs and indictments of the entertainment industry. Devito shows an early version here of the nasty business he would expound upon with movies like Throw Momma from the Train and War of the Roses. The Ratings Game is a great find by the folks at Olive.

Also from Olive is the Blu-ray edition of Stagecoach, starring all four Highwaymen in 1986; Otto Preminger’s Tell Me That You Love Me Junie Moon, a groovy comedy from 1970 with an early performance by Liza Minelli and a true family favorite from the late 60s called Yours, Mine and Ours, starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in a sort of Brady Bunch type comedy. Go to olivefilms.com

The Shout! Factory has made your correspondent quite happy with their Blu-ray release of… yes, The Gong Show Movie, which brought Chuck Barris and the gang, including a topless Jaye P. Morgan, to the silver screen. I’ll bet I saw it five times in the theater and this classic has never been released in any home video format.

I used to skip last hour at Purcell High School in those pre VCR barely had cable days to watch The Gong Show, which, I realize now, was satirizing American Idol and other crappy shows of that ilk 40 years before they were ever on the air. I loved it then and watch you tubes of it now.

Actually, my friend Brad Copeland had Chuck on the radio several years ago and let me sit in. To even get to speak to this genius was an honor. I asked him then if episodes of The Gong Show would every officially be released on home video. His response?

“Who would ever want to watch that?” he said.

Go to the shoutfactory.com website and see the company’s other new releases like the semi disaster pics Rollercoaster, which I think was the last movie (unless it was Battlestar Galactica) released in Sensurround, and Two Minute Warning.

Shout! Factory is also keen on television releases, like The Bold Ones, both The Senator with Hal Holbrook, and The Defenders with E.G. Marshall.

Kino Lorber also, each month, offers terrific finds, usually restored to Blu-ray. A recent headliner is The Taking of Pelham 1… 2… 3 with Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw and Martin Balsam.

Pelham has grown in stature since its release – especially with the Denzel Washington/Tony Scott remake and I don’t remember the original being a box office smash. However, from the first time I saw Pelham in the theater, it’s been a favorite – the politics of New York, great villains and, of course, Matthau, one of the most versatile and off kilter leading men of all time. If one hasn’t seen this classic, Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray is a most own.

There’s more – John Huston’s legendary film of Moby Dick, with Gregory Peck and Orson Welles and a script by Ray Bradbury in Blu-ray, along with Robert Wise’s film noir The Captive City, and his adult romance Two for the Seesaw, with Robert Mitchum and Shirley Maclaine.

For the serious film buff, KL has really dusted off some silent treasures by Fritz Lang – Spies and Woman in the Moon. All these are available at kinolorber.com.

Warner Archive is thrilling its fans by releasing several of their true, honest to goodness classics in Blu-ray. What started as a few releases every month or so, has now turned into an avalanche. These films are so well known and important they need no introduction.

How about musicals like Victor Victoria or Silk Stockings or The Unskinable Molly Brown or Bogart classics like To Have and Have Not or Father of the Bride or even 1973’s The Deadly Trackers with Richard Harris and Rod Taylor?

As we were speaking of music earlier, we must remember that the DVD invasion also includes fantastic opportunities to enjoy live performances. This month we get some dandies as Time Life releases Opry Video, an eight-disc box set which features some of America’s greatest country performers in their natural habitat, from the 1950s through the 70s. Here’s Cash and Parton and Jones and Wynette and Lynn and Ray Price and all in between. Absolute treasure.

Michael Pare is an unstoppable leading mean, who brings something different to every role he plays while also being a true eagle – an honest and evocative person who has seen it all in the entertainment business. From Streets of Fire to Into the Storm to Eddie and the Cruisers, the dude’s made over 125 movie and TV appearances and I had the honor of speaking to him regarding his newest picture, a western called Traded, which also features Tom Sizemore (a hell of a fine actor) and country singers Trace Adkins and Kris Kristofferson.

Traded has all the elements we have come to expect in a Western film and with that cast will most certainly be a video hit. It’s available on disc and pay per view.

We mustn’t forget our friends at Twilight Time – who recently, and most surely will again, had a colossal sale on their very rare products. There are those of us who can’t wait until their updated release list comes around and as I’ve really had some time to watch some of their incredible discs, I’d like to expound.

Cowboy is the Twilight Time find of the year so far. I had no idea what a terrific western this is and, until now hadn’t realized that with Jubal (another Twilight Time offering) and 3:10 to Yuma and Cowboy, Glenn Ford and director Delmer Daves could easily be identified in the same breath as Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher or James Stewart and Anthony Mann for superior Western pictures in the 50s.

Cowboy was all premise – Glenn plays an earthy cattle baron who is forced to take newbie Jack Lemmon on a drive. That’s where convention stops. What follows is an incredibly adult story of life in the West with unforgettable characters, fast quick action and a tough brutal worldview. Buy this movie.

I also had never seen either Hawaii or The Hawaiians and I’m glad I waited until the Twilight Time releases to do so. Both are epic in the true sense of the word as well as a total feast to the eyes and ears.

Inserts is for sure a lost movie which Twilight Time has blessed with its profound work. It’s seedy and nasty for sure, telling a story of adult filmmaking in the day, but this Blu-ray offers essential viewing.

Also available from Twilight Time is Hardcore, a tough, important picture directed by Paul Schrader and starring a raging George C. Scott as a Calvinist father whose daughter has fallen into southern California porn; Romeo is Bleeding, a modern noir with Gary Oldman, and the Fred Zinneman classic The Member of the Wedding.

The Great George Hamilton

Now for a bit of personal privilege. I’ve mentioned before that I’m darn lucky to have Gray Frederickson in my life – he’s an industry veteran with an Oscar for producing The Godfather Part II and a hallowed reputation in Hollywood. One of his greatest friends since the late 60s is George Hamilton and actually, I had spent a little time with him, but Gray had always told me what a joy it was to spend real time with one of the last true leading men in the movie business.

I can’t announce why Mr. Hamilton visited Oklahoma – let’s just say he might be sinking his teeth into a sequel of one of his most popular films – but a day with this man was all it was made out to be. I’m not the first to say he may be the greatest dinner companion in modern history, like say some of the great wits of the 20s. Every question you ask is answered with a story. An unbelievable story. Like the first time George met Robert Mitchum for Home from the Hill – Mitchum was sitting under a tree talking to a man reposing on the lowest branch, who turned out to be William Faulkner, or the time he got a leading part because he caught a studio head misbehaving while George was posing as a French room service waiter or his version of what happened when Sarah Miles’ manager was murdered during the filming of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.

When you see a George Hamilton picture on TV or you see him interviewed or whatever, know that he is a man among men and I’m counting the minutes until I can pepper him with questions once again. I even called our Governor, Mary Fallin to come hang out with us.

That’s the age we’re in friends – and it’s glorious. These movies, which played theaters then were immediately sold to television, where they were demeaned by local editors and blown out of proportion by the small screen.

Until next time, see you at the flickers!

- Bud Elder

]]>budelder@thedigitalbits.com (Bud Elder)View from the Cheap SeatsFri, 05 Aug 2016 16:00:43 -0700On the Pleasures of Film Noir & Bud and the “Bs”http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/film-noir-bud-and-the-bs
http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/film-noir-bud-and-the-bs

I’m trying to remember when I put it all together, when it dawned on me that there were these wonderful movies, shown, at the time, when there were only three local stations and local guys programmed the movies, after the last late show. They were cheap, even I could see that, but there was just something about these black and whites that kept me fascinated and many a long night I would suffer through local commercials just to see either justice done or perverted.

And the titles – Private Hell 36, Shack Out on 101, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands and Five Against the House. And the actors, has-beens and wanna-bes, but they were just terrific. Tom Neal and Ann Savage and Dennis O’Keefe and Preston Foster and Lawrence Tierney. And this was the “B” list. [Read on here...]

Earlier you might catch Out of the Past or Ace in the Hole or In a Lonely Place or Criss Cross, those with legendary actors and directors out of the studio system – Burt Lancaster and Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak or Robert Mitchum or even Stanley Kubrick or John Huston with Marie Windsor and Elisha Cook.

Then they were updated – Body Heat and Farwell My Lovely and The Grifters and The Kill Off.

And that music – Miklos Rosza and David Raskin and Bernard Hermann. I think we’re going to talk about film music in a future column.

I’m sure I had no idea what “film noir” was until I found what was then and is now a seminal book on the subject “The Film Noir Encyclopedia” by Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini and Robert Porfino. And I wore out one copy and bought another. And devoured other books and websites and CDs and DVDs and pawed through Netflix like Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep.

Then came Eddie Muller. I’ve never met this man, but I will. But James Ellroy did – the high priest of noir fiction called Muller the “czar of noir.”

In fact, I first came to Muller through his novels – his novels “The Distance” and “Shadow Boxer” were fantastic, but then he commissioned the Film Noir Foundation and, through his tireless work, these movies, these treasures were unmasked, uncovered and brought into the mainstream. “B” movies were given the “A” list treatment and studios got out their shovels and pickaxes and went through their caves in Kansas and started releasing these pictures en masse to a starving audience, many times with Muller himself on the audio commentary.

Look for him on such DVDs as Born to Kill, Fallen Angel, The Lineup, (with Ellroy) and my particular favorite Crime Wave, an original poster of which is over my bed.

So then comes Muller’s Film Noir Foundation which is “Dedicated to Rescuing and Restoring America’s Noir Heritage,” which they have accomplished in (Sam) spades. Here are some of the movies they’ve saved – Cry Danger (1951), with Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming, Hide Tide, (1947) with the great Lee Tracy and the gem of all gems – The Prowler, directed by Joseph Losey, that commie, and starring my Oklahoma homeboy Van Heflin, which has been called “the creepiest of all film noirs,” by The Village Voice.

Good work boys.

You can become a member of the Film Noir Association for not much money, which is actually a donation. You get a fabulous magazine and informative emails. And you get invited to film festivals – the mother ship of all noir festivals is annually in San Francisco, but this year they will be held in Hollywood April 15-24 and, close to this cowboy, in Austin May 20-22.

New Classics on Disc

As I mentioned earlier, studios and digital releasing entities are harvesting their libraries to bring film noir out into the light.

Kino Lorber has done a magnificent job of unearthing terrific titles – I need go no farther than their recent releases of Pitfall, a 1948 study in debauchery with, again, Dick Powell, directed by Andre De Toth; film noir stalwart John Payne (how great was he?) in The Crooked Way, 1949, with cinematography by genius shooter John Alton, Robert Wise’s The Captive City and Alan Rudolph’s neo noir Love at Large, with a terrific Tom Berenger.

Twilight Time has not shied away from noir – soon they will offer, for the second time, Fritz Lang’s seminal The Big Heat, with Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin. It gets no better than this. The group, which only creates 3,000 titles, also struck noir pay dirt with Violent Saturday, a 3-D disc of Man in the Dark, Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing and Dana Andrews in Where the Sidewalk Ends, as well as a glorious transformation of Leave Her to Heaven. There are also modern day noirs such as The Driver, Hard Times, U-Turn and Wild at Heart.

Warner Archive even has its own “Warner Noir” imprint and, as the carrier has the RKO studio titles, where noir reigned supreme, you can order, at any time such titles as The Fall Guy, Loophole, This Woman is Dangerous and Tomorrow is Another Day.

Criterion has gifted us mere mortals with about one noir a month and they’re doozies – titles already on the marketplace such as Kiss Me Deadly and the recently released Gilda are fabulous but it’s the little gems such as Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink House and Don Siegel’s Riot in Cell Block 11, that really trip my trigger. Visit Criterion.com.

Flicker Alley currently has available Woman on the Run and Too Late for Tears, both restored through efforts of the Film Noir Foundation. Order these two today at flickeralley.com

I still can’t believe some of these treasures that are available to come right to my mailbox – check these out.

Again, Kino Lorber is right on point with some fantastic new features, many on home video for the first time.

First there’s a new restoration in 3-D of the cult classic Gog, a man vs. machine debate from 1954 starring Richard Egan; there’s also the wonderful classic Donavan’s Brain with Lew Ayres; Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis in their pre-Spartacus appearance, directed by the great Richard Fleischer; When Eight Bells Toll, a wonderful action film based on the Alistair McLean novel; The Rosary Murders, starring Donald Sutherland with a script by Elmore Leonard and Cop, a dark and deep character study starring James Woods and based on the novel by James Ellroy. There are also two rather legendary comedies as well, Jack Lemmon and Barbara Harris in The War Between the Men and the Women, based, in part, on the writings of Thurber and a true classic, Peter Sellers in After the Fox.

Also from Kino Lorber – Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacClaine in Robert Wise’s Two for the Seesaw; Tony Richardson’s film of the John Irving novel The Hotel New Hampshire and Ken Russell’s Valentino.

But the gem of all from Kino Lorber is The Challenge, starring Scott Glenn and Tishiro Mifune, directed by John Frankenheimer from 1982.

Those of us who were die hard Frankenheimer fans had to take him where we could get him. While French Connection II and Black Sunday were both terrific, there was a little monster picture called Prophecy that only played drive ins. The Challenge started a comeback of sorts from Frankenheimer, one of several he would have over his career, and it’s a terrific martial arts film.

If The Challenge was ever available in any form on home video, I don’t remember it, but it most certainly has been lost for a long time. I can’t wait to see it again.

Twilight Time is so cogent and ever present that there is a defined segment of the population whose breath baits. Here’s a few recent releases. Remember, these are all beautifully restored Blu-rays and are created in batches of 3,000. TwilightTimeMovies.com is where you find them.

Shadows and Fog is my favorite of the minor Woody Allen movies – it barely got released in 1991 and, for real, that’s another movie poster up in my empire somewhere. It’s a send up of German Expressionist filmmaking with Woody as his classic character caught up in a Kafka-esque nightmare. Woody fans should be snapping this up.

The Detective almost made my previous film noir list, and it probably is. Sinatra is just perfect in a role similar to what he would play in his last three movies. The Detective is a sordid piece of business, somewhat shocking, I think, in the late sixties, but it’s glorious in this Twilight Time version.

I’m a tad partial to Bound for Glory, as much of it takes place here in Oklahoma. Why this movie is so lost I’ll never know – it’s the story of Woody Guthrie, who, I say with disgust, is not in the Oklahoma Hall of Fame as he was a gol-danged Commie. David Carradine plays Guthrie and the picture is one of those 70s miracles directed by Hal Ashby. It’s a great trivia question in that it was nominated for Best Picture in 1976 against Taxi Driver and All the President’s Men and Network and, the eventual winner Rocky.

That Burt Lancaster continued to be a leading a man until he died was a great gift to movie goers and Scorpio might have been a throwaway picture had he not been the lead – but with him, it’s a terrific spy movie and what’s amazing is to watch him, as a senior citizen still do these wonderful stunts..he was an amazing movie star.

Other Twilight Time titles include: Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in From the Terrace, Richard Brooks’ underrated The Happy Ending and both Hawaii and The Hawaiians.

Olive Films has released one of the most bizarre films ever made, in glorious Blu-ray. Roar took eleven years to make and ended up with a $17 million price tag and it’s just awful, but it’s the kind of awful from which you’ll not be bored.

With a cast led by Tippi Hedren and her daughter, Melanie Griffith and directed by Noel Marshall, Hedren’s husband at the time, the picture takes realism to the next level. Lions are real and everywhere, sleeping, sprawling, attacking, eating and everything else. This is a movie that truly every movie lover should own. It’s available at olivefilms.com.

Also at the site you can check out new Blu-rays such as Jinxed, another Roar-like experience with Bette Midler, directed by Don Siegel; Speechless, a highly underrated political romantic comedy with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis; and Dark Blue, a terrific cop movie with an original screenplay by James Ellroy.

Warner Archive, of course, is the granddaddy of them all and, with their recent Blu-ray releases, have really brought some classics to market, including Henry Fonda in Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, Bogart in Passage to Marseille and the great Albert Finney in Wolfen.

Other treasures in WA’s recent releases include pictures with Wayne Morris, George Brent and one of the true noir westerns Roughshod, with Robert Sterling and Gloria Grahame.

Star Vista has recently released more episodes of, yes Hee Haw, however, before you pass judgment, this is one of the most popular series in the history of television and, should the jokes not be to your taste, sit back and listen to the music from George and Tammy and Johnny Cash and Dolly and Waylon Jennings. These treasures are available at timelife.com.

Also, keeping with classic television, the Shout! Factory has released the final season of Hill Street Blues.

The officers and detectives of the toughest precinct on television work their final shift in the seventh and last season of Hill Street Blues. Steven Bochco’s groundbreaking masterpiece of television drama concludes its examination of the lives of the men and women who protect and serve the citizens of a volatile city in these twenty-two episodes, once again delivering the high quality writing, acting, and direction fans have come to expect from this universally acclaimed program.

The unmatched ensemble cast – including Daniel J. Travanti, Veronica Hamel, Bruce Weitz, Betty Thomas, Charles Haid, Joe Spano, James B. Sikking, Taurean Blaque, and Dennis Franz – are in top form for this climactic season, from its powerful opening to its fiery conclusion.

That’s a lot of movies. And I promise we’ll catch you at the flix again soon.

I had to sit on maybe the biggest movie story in America. For a long time. And now that it’s been completed and is over, I’m shocked that the whole thing hasn’t been on the front page of The New York Times.

I’ve perhaps casually mentioned that I helped create (didn’t get in the way of) a film school here in Oklahoma City, actually at Oklahoma City Community College. The idea was, unlike film degrees that are based on watching and studying themes and points of view and reading scripts, the creative side, so to speak, to offer a technical, hands on degree program, why a community college was selected in the first place. And to enhance the experience, we got the finest equipment in the world – Avid editors and cameras and lenses and lights and then, through a lot of hard work from a lot of good people, here came the ultimate – a full end studio, built to the specs of an actual Hollywood soundstage. If another state funded school has a facility like this, I’d like to see it. [Read on here...]

This all works because we recruited back to Oklahoma a Hollywood legend to bring his experience, contacts and hubris to run the whole thing. Gray Frederickson was screwing around in Italy in the mid to late 60s and stumbled onto the set of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, an Italian production for sure, but a top of the line shoot, in that it would have a huge worldwide release in that it was the highly anticipated third film in the “Man With No Name” trilogy starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone. Gray made connections and soon he was that American who would help Italian crews shoot their way across the United States. He worked with Italian screen legends Ugo Tognazzi, Vittoria De Sica and Alberto Sordi.

Then he came to Hollywood and through a series of circumstances, which we should probably should discuss someday ended up partnering with Al Ruddy, who had already by the early 70s, made his name by creating and producing the hit sitcom Hogan’s Heroes to produce The Godfather.

Thus followed with Gray and long and fruitful partnership with Francis Coppola that resulted in The Godfather, Part II, Apocalypse Now, One from the Heart and The Godfather, Part III. Oscars followed in their wake.

You know Coppola, right? He’s the Big Cheese of American filmmaking who led a revolution in the 70s like no other impresario since Orson Welles and spawned a family of movie making talent which continues to impress – his daughter Sofia is an Oscar winning screenwriter and his nephew Nicolas Cage is an Oscar winning actor; his sister, Talia is an Oscar nominated actress and his son Roman is an Oscar nominated screenwriter and his nephew Jason Schwartzman is an essential character actor.

Get this – Coppola’s last studio feature was his adaptation of the John Grisham novel The Rainmaker in 1996. Wow. Since that time, Coppola has written and directed several independent productions released, honestly, to indifference.

While both Gray and Francis stayed in touch, checked on each other’s children and family, as Francis wasn’t actually making films any more, there was small hope of them ever working again.

A budget shortfall at OCCC raised the need for a fundraiser and the pressure was on Gray to create an event that would raise significant coin. Gray is not an asker – I get it because I’m not one either – but he took as gulp and asked Francis, notorious for turning down even the most influential and popular film festivals and Hollywood events, to fly on his own dime to Oklahoma City and spend a day with students and donors and even go onstage and do a Q&A.

Don’t forget that Coppola is a now a major business executive, the Coppola Winery is no vanity project, it is a major corporation and Coppola is a hands on CEO.

However, come he did – to a packed house. The evening was blissful and informative and a dream for movie buffs. Coppola himself seemed to have a good time. And, actually, it turns out, he was doing a little scheming as well.

And thus the secret.

I don’t know whether Coppola’s newest idea was generated because of his visit to the unreal facilities at OCCC or he had thought it through and had yet to find a place to see it realized.

So, in early June, under the cover of darkness, Francis Coppola moved to Oklahoma City. It should be mentioned that the director and the Sooner State had met before – because of Gray, Coppola had optioned The Outsiders and had filmed it in its original setting of Tulsa and, so taken with the area, Coppola used the city again for Rumble Fish.

Of there were rumblings in Oklahoma City – this person spotted him in a theater or that in one of the college buildings however, I had been told to keep my yap shut and so I did.

Then, local casting companies started sending out parts for a super-secret project at OCCC and the rumor mill went into overtime. But again, these lips were locked.

Finally, after a month, Coppola announced he completed his opus – an experiment in live cinema – a movie performance piece created in real time. Coppola utilized modern filmmaking techniques and the most advanced video technology to create a cohesive dramatic production filmed live. To make it happen, the project included over 70 film students enrolled in a special course, in order to earn college credit. They served as camera operators, grips, sound, costumes, props, video, acting, stage management and producing.

Distant Vision, the name of the production was written, directed and produced by Coppola, is the story of three generations of the Corrado family whose history spans the development of television.

A very surprised audience was invited to the premiere of the film at a local Oklahoma City.

Coppola was very pleased with the outcome.

“Our experimental workshop has been a vital part of my own understanding of live cinema. The faculty and students here have been tremendously valuable and supportive, and working in Oklahoma is always fruitful and a pleasure. I look forward to conducting larger-scale workshops in the future and developing plans for a full production several years from now,” Coppola said.

But there’s a little more. While social opportunities with Mr. Coppola were nonexistent, a few days before starting the project, Gray made sure the three of us went to dinner. It was as glorious as one would think.

We talked about a lot – Abel Glance, Paul Fischer’s new book called “A Kim Jong Il Production,” a true story about the Korean dictator’s attempt to make good movies from his country, achieved by kidnapping South Korea’s greatest actress and director, John Milius, who is recovering from a devastating stroke and, my dream conversation regarding a film he produced in the 80s called Hammett which was director Win Winders’ American debut about the legendary crime writer – the script was written by native Oklahoman Ross Thomas, who also has a cameo. There have been stories for years that Coppola had to step in and direct what would be the finished product and there major problems during shooting.

I won’t spoil confidences, but I got my answer.

I’ll report when the next component of this project comes to fruition.

By the way, “A Kim Jong Il Production” is a stunning read. Another that I’ll mention, totally off subject, is another fascinating biography “Jerry Lee Lewis – His Own Story,” by Rick Bragg, a very influential Southern writer, that is a, ok, a killer. I actually got to talk to the Killer himself at a recent concert stop and told him I’d spread the word. Consider it done.

New on Blu-ray & DVD

It’s been a while, so I’ve got some new releases to discuss.

The Magician is out on Blu-ray from the Cohen Media Group. It is directed by Chuck Workman, who produces those short, clip rich, videos at the Academy Awards every year, has never before seen clips, rich interviews and a stunning overview of Orson Welles. The clips alone from Welles’ unfinished films like Don Quixote and The Deep and his theatrical productions are worth watching the film but it is so insightful and so reverent that I highly suggest you buy The Magician today.

Also out from Cohen is the dark, deep Academy Award nominated Timbuktu.

Twilight Time continues to make home video history by finding these incredibly rare titles and giving them a loving restoration. Then, smart guys that they are, they limit these titles to 3,000 or, for some popular titles, 5,000.

Here are some of the new releases:

Love and Death – Can you believe Woody Allen made both this and Sleeper back to back and, while Sleeper was first and nearest to my heart, this is the movie that pushed Woody straight into Annie Hall. I actually, to this day, can’t get through it without collapsing – one of the funniest movies ever made and brilliantly restored by Twilight Time.

Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy – This was the beginning of Woody Allen’s 80s period that included Mia Farrow in almost every picture – this decade brought Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose. This is minor Woody but beautifully shot and completely entertaining. Beautiful restoration.

Lenny – Two Dustin Hoffman pictures are also available in limited quantities from Twilight Time. I’m going to say this is a lost picture and it’s a darn shame. It was directed by Bob Fosse at the peak of his powers, Dustin and Valerie Perrine are on fire, all Oscar nominated by the way, and today’s audiences need to know all about Lenny Bruce. Its stark black and white photography is perfect for Blu-ray. Get this one while you can.

American Buffalo – If Lenny is lost, this is dead and buried. This is the movie of the classic David Mamet play, with Dustin Hoffman taking the lead which both Pacino and Duvall played onstage. Thanks for this one especially, Twilight Time.

Criterion wows us with the reverential treatment of lost noirs, most recently Ride the Pink Horse, never available on home video. Leave it to Criterion to bring out the entire restored classic on Blu-ray with tons of extras and a beautiful, lovely restoration. Robert Montgomery both stars and directs this masterpiece, based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. This is never on TCM and is totally worth buying.

More treasures from Criterion include Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King, Richard Brooks’ film version of In Cold Blood and D.A. Pennebaker’s incisive look at Bob Dylan Don’t Look Back.

Kino Lorder’s Studio Collection, all on Blu-ray, offers an amazing selection of pictures in September, including Vigilante Force, starring Kris Kristofferson and Jan-Michael Vincent, featuring audio commentary with cult director George Armitage; Phil Karlson directing Rock Hudson in a terribly lost WWII thriller Hornet’s Nest and House of Long Shadows, which shows that Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and John Carradine could still have fun in the 80s.

Here’s some other lost gems – Billy Two Hats, a nice 70s western with Gregory Peck and Desi Arnaz Jr.; Busting, a great cop drama with Robert Blake and Elliot Gould: a grouping of Robert Mitchum movies, including Young Billy Young, Man With a Gun and The Wonderful Country and both Support Your Local Sheriff and Support Your Local Gunfighter, both with our recently departed Oklahoma native Jim Garner.

Star Vista & Time Life has been at the epicenter of great TV releases for a long time, but it seems to me they’re working overtime.

For the first time on DVD, the company has released the best episodes from the groundbreaking years of Carol Burnett’s beloved variety show, including the first episode aired, the first performances of many of her famous characters, legendary guest stars, and show-stopping musical performances.

Even Carol herself is thrilled to see these released.

“No one has seen the first five seasons of The Carol Burnett Show since they were first aired – no re-runs, no web streaming, no DVDs, nothing, nowhere, zip… until now,” she said.

And then there’s Hee Haw.

Roy Clark and Buck Owens hosted the countrified ensemble show, pickin’ and grinnin’ and singin’ and spinnin’ with a talented cast of characters. Minnie Pearl, Grandpa Jones, Archie Campbell, and the rest of the Hee Haw gang traded knee-slappers and gut-busting one-liners in hilarious sketches including “Doc Campbell,” “PFFT! You Was Gone” and “Gordie’s General Store“—as well as the all-time favorites “Rindercella” and “Trigonometry.“

And because Hee Haw was a favorite stop for country’s greatest stars, the collection features over 100 classic performances by country stars at the peaks of their careers, like Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr. and so many more!

The complete set includes 2 Bonus DVDs. Hee Haw Laffs includes enduring sketches and countess comic moments from the early years, plus the series premiere with Loretta Lynn and Charley Pride as it aired in 1969. You’ll also enjoy exclusive bonus interviews with original cast members including Roy Clark and Lulu Roman.

To me, Hee Haw was always about the music. And, even if the jokes are stale or whatever, shut your eyes and listen.

Shout! Factory must be reading my mail with regard to their new releases.

There was once a New York tough guy novelist named Vincent Patrick who made a stunning fictional debut at a late age with a book called The Pope of Greenwich Village. The book was a stunner and it wasn’t long before the film was put into production, directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring two relative unknowns, Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke. The result was one of the best films of the 80s, although it has flown completely off the radar until just now when it was released in Blu-ray. Trust me, it’s a gem.

Don’t get me started about Carole King – I think she has never been given her due. She is incapable of writing a bad song and is a generous performer with a legendary voice. She keeps making fabulous records and tours sporadically. And, of course, there’s a new jukebox musical of her songs on Broadway.

Shout! Factory recently released the MusicCares tribute to Carole and it’s unreal – here’s all I have to say – Carole and James Taylor performing “Sweet Seasons.”

Also, show of hands for those who remember The Thunderbirds? That was the series which featured the Supermarionation technique which influenced science fiction and pop culture forever. Timeless Media, part of Shout! Factory has released the entire series and I know several of my friends have already purchased. The same group has also released the complete series of The Saint, with Roger Moore.

Finally, Warner Archive releases so much on a weekly basis that I thought we might just discuss their venture into Blu-ray. The group has released several high end pictures in that format such as 42nd Street, The Great Race and The Hudsucker Proxy and now have released The Hunger, one of Tony Scott’s first movies, a vampire opus, with David Bowie, Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve; The World According to Garp, with our dear late Robin Williams and based on the book and Richard Donner’s Ladyhawke.

]]>budelder@thedigitalbits.com (Bud Elder)View from the Cheap SeatsThu, 27 Aug 2015 11:57:21 -0700On Robert Altman (and a New Biography on his Life and Work)http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/on-robert-altman
http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/on-robert-altman

Robert Altman said his last “that’s a wrap,” can you believe it, some eight or nine years ago and it seems as though any hope of mainstream studio films with emotional weight, sharp characters, social satire and natural, cliché free dialogue was buried right next to him.

Every Hollywood director since the beginning of the medium owes a debt to Robert Altman. His style was so distinctive, so fresh and so natural that people would say to themselves, “Oh that’s what directors do.” [Read on here...]

Altman owned the 1970s, which many historians will most certainly remember as being the greatest decade in American film history. After years of toiling in television drama, he directed, far away from interfering studio eyes, M*A*S*H, which would be, ironically, the largest financial hit of his career. From that point until his death, he never hesitated, never stopped. When studios would abandon him, he turned to television; when TV couldn’t find a place for his vision, he went to Broadway then to opera then to film school, where he filmed a masterful single character drama in a sorority house. Then, as though he never left, Hollywood remembered him as his sword became sharper and he worked until he died, with a deal memo for what would have been a masterful final film on his fax machine.

Every Hollywood director since the beginning of the medium owes a debt to Robert Altman. His style was so distinctive, so fresh and so natural that people would say to themselves, “Oh that’s what directors do.”

A concerted effort to bring Altman and his work around again is paying large dividends – the best movie of last year, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, was a kissing cousin to Altman’s take on Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye and, following an exquisite documentary, which achieved the rare distinction of telling, with equal finesse, both Altman’s personal and professional biography, comes an oversized book that could quite possibly be the most intelligent and thoughtful of its kind. And it’s written in a partnership with Giulla D’Agnolo Vallan and Katherine Reed Altman, as in Mrs. Robert Altman, as in his most effective creative partner, his muse and the love of his life.

And I got to interview her. She may now be the love of mine. A fiercely opinionated yet quite charming and effusive, Mrs. Altman is the keeper of the flame. Would that Orson Welles or other artists who had rollercoaster personal lives, married and divorced and kids here and there had someone that was such a real partner.

Mrs. Altman was an actress, of sorts, and met Mr. Altman during the television stage in his career, they got married with three children of his and one of hers looking on and two more would join the firm later.

She describes the director ever so wistfully as a “honest to goodness boy next door type,” with mid western sensibilities and a strong sense of family and Altman’s brood watched as he continued to slog through television and through his first two major studio features, which were Countdown in 1968 and That Cold Day in the Park a year later. While both films are now considered now to contain signals that would very soon launch an extraordinary career, they were both afterthoughts at the time. In fact, Countdown, which starred James Caan and Robert Duvall, neither the box office star they eventually would become, was released as the bottom of a double bill with The Green Berets. Altman’s third feature was released with little fanfare, mostly as 20th Century Fox had absolutely no idea what to do with it. Featuring a rather starless cast and a feeling of ensemble perhaps unseen in any major picture, Altman, hiding from studio executives during its filming, delivered M*A*S*H.

We all know what happened next, well, actually for the next 25 years. Movies, glorious movies. What we perhaps didn’t know was that Altman’s family traveled for the most part to every location, and that Mrs. Altman, even now, remembers each film mostly by where it was shot, so ensconced was she with the production. The children entered the business too, for the most part – they’re production designers and cameramen and musicians and in the case of Wesley Ivan Hurt, Altman’s grandson, who played, with relish and style, the role of Swee Pea in Popeye added acting to their resume.

Altman’s early output as an “A” list director was astonishing. Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Images, Thieves Like Us, California Split and The Long Goodbye all hold up grandly today. But, in the Altman canon they were the first pitches toward a home run.

Watch Nashville today. Watch the Criterion Blu-ray. There is absolutely nothing like it.

“Altman” offers a wonderful essay by Kurt Vonnegut (Altman announced in Playboy that he was going to make Breakfast of Champions which, sadly, never happened) regarding Nashville.

“Most that has been done with a movie camera so far has been as silly as a penny arcade. But now Robert Altman has used the camera to produce a ribbon of acetate that, when illuminated from behind, projects onto a flat surface in a darkened room anywhere a shadow play of what we have truly become and where we might look for greater wisdom. The name of the film is Nashville.”

Also included in the book is a 1983 letter to Altman from no less than Richard Nixon, who leaves a giant footprint on Altman’s career, from Nashville, to Philip Baker Hall portraying the president in a one man play filmed by Altman entitled Secret Honor.

Nixon says: “In talking with my daughter Julie recently she told me that one of her all time favorite movies was your Nashville.”

I did not get to see it and wondered if by chance it has been or will be released on cassette. Don’t go to too much trouble but if your secretary would check it out, I’d appreciate it.”

Say that again?

Julie even sawNashville? Please. She would have needed an interpreter. Mrs. Altman said her husband cherished the letter but what is that about? He was trying to mooch a copy? Those were form letters to every director in town so that he could build up a library?

Post Nashville, there’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, certainly not the film Dino De Laurentiis envisioned, then a series of pictures for 20th Century Fox including 3 Women, A Wedding, A Perfect Couple, Quintet, and, a feature considered so bad that Fox never officially released it and the only such that is not available in home video, Health.

Next up, Popeye, Altman’s musical take on the classic cartoon character. Co-produced by Disney and Paramount, one can only imagine the bone headed studio executives who envisioned the ruination of this character as they later would Yogi Bear, The Cat in the Hat and countless others. I think Popeye, released right at the burgeoning of home video, was the last movie I saw in the theaters over three or four times (I’ve only gone back to see one in the last 20 years, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, which I might watch again tonight.)

Popeye was ravaged by the critics and is probably considered a flop today, although it was hugely successful financially. Word to the wise, it’s a masterpiece and plays as wonderfully today as it did thirty years ago.

“Reviewers took aim at Popeye, and made it somewhat of a joke,” said Mrs. Altman. “The reception to that particular film broke Bob’s heart.”

Post Popeye it was slim pickings for Altman and he eventually moved to Paris. It is during this period that the magnificent Vincent and Theo, originally shot for a four hour television mini-series, Beyond Therapy, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, which Altman had directed on Broadway, Fool for Love and The Caine Mutiny Court Marshall and other films for television were made Many of these were released very sparsely and most appear today as afterthoughts.

But the old master wasn’t finished yet.

The Player began a strong renaissance of Altman’s work and was a major hit, leading to Short Cuts, Kansas City, Cookie’s Fortune and his last masterpiece Gosford Park.

A true sleeper among this last batch of brilliance was The Gingerbread Man, based on a script by John Grisham and starring Kenneth Branagh. The film went through a very public struggle until Altman’s version was released.

“Gingerbread Man is a wonderful, beautiful film,” Mrs. Altman said. “I remember Bob was particularly proud of that one and he fought with all he had to see it released correctly. We had a wonderful time during production, but it zapped Bob that he had to fight so hard for it.”

Altman would receive an honorary Oscar, direct a final film, A Prairie Home Companion and die. And leave behind a voice as lovely as his own to celebrate his career and catalogue his legacy.

“Actors loved Bob,” said Mrs. Altman. “All the greats in the movie business either worked with him or wanted to – from his stock company of Shelley Duvall and Paul Dooley and Keith Carradine to genuine superstars like Paul Newman, Elliott Gould and Meryl Streep, they all realized that he was a wonderful, gentle spirit who made his actors and his crew part of the family and his family at home part of the crew. That was his genius.”

“Altman,” published by Abrams and available where fine books are sold, could be considered a film lover’s holy grail of a coffee table book. Mine would never serve that purpose – it might mean other people would touch it.

New on Blu-ray & DVD

Kino Lorber is an important distributor of both classics and brand new independent films which, frankly, need to be seen. In their words, the company “brings critically acclaimed classic and contemporary world cinema to discerning audiences, whether in theaters, at home or online.”

In fact, the above discussed The Long Goodbye, on my all time top ten list, as well as Thieves Like Us and Buffalo Bill and the Indians are available there in magnificent Blu-ray editions.

The company also has, in its library, modern day classics, all mostly forgotten gems, like Hickey and Boggs, Last Embrace, John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pickup, based on the Elmore Leonard novel, Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and too many more to mention, but all that you’ll want. (My Oklahoma City friend and noted attorney Mark Brown regularly hides his credit card bills from the little woman with regard to purchasing masterpieces such as these.)

For May, Kino Lorber announces the Blu-ray and DVD releases of two films by masters of European horror: Mario Bava’s The Evil Eye (along with the alternate European cut, The Girl Who Knew Too Much), about a young woman who launches her own investigation of a murder only to learn that she might be next on the killer’s list, and Jean Rollin’s The Escapees, which follows two female mental patients who have escaped from a hospital and embark on a dreamlike journey across the French countryside.

While we’re on web addresses, here’s a change – one can no longer find these fabulous, one of a kind films of Warner Archive at its old site – you must now go www.wbshop.com to search for these glorious masterpieces. Just for one day I would love to be the person, or on the committee, who decides what films to release and which ones to dangle in front of us mere mortals as “coming soon.”

This month Warner Archive has released the Blu-ray of the magisterial 42nd Street in glorious black and white. You’ve seen copycats of this showbiz masterpiece, and you may have even seen its Broadway incarnation but this is the real deal and it’s a wonderful piece of history that I’ve watched about eight times.

Get these other titles, many of which, even I, your humble servant who knows all, never dreamed existed. The Goldwyn Follies with Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy and the Ritz Brothers, who I still insist, despite negative connotations from those ignorant, are funny; the complete set of Tony Anthony’s (his real name belongs in the forward of The Godfather as these are all Italian westerns) The Stranger and its sequels; Arrow in the Dust, which I would watch just to see its star, Sterling Hayden, as well as my longtime family friend Jimmy Wakely, from Rosedale, Oklahoma; The Marauders with Dan Duryea; Black Patch, starring George Montgomery, who I had dinner with once in Reno, Nevada and Black Gold, with Anthony Quinn, directed by no less than Phil Karlson.

I love a company called Cheezy Flicks – they come up with some real whack job pictures from who knows where, along with the now and again revival of a true forgotten classic. It was from these fine folks that I recently got my copy of the comedy classic Viva Max.

This month is no different – grab these while you can – Summer Heat, a deep and provocative character study which probably played every drive-in in America; Shelter a new post apocalyptic thriller which merits ownership and Chiller 3, which I’m sure can’t much the subtlety and deep human emotions of the first two. They’re fabulous.

Ah, but Cheezy Flicks has found a real sleeper, one totally lost to time, Silver Bears, a somewhat complicated caper with Michael Caine, who I’ve decided might be the greatest leading man in movie history, Louis Jordan, the great Martin Balsam and, get this, legendary comics Tommy Smothers and Jay Leno. If you have never seen this movie, directed by Ivan Passer, who made many wonderful pictures in the 70s, you should purchase this today.

Criterion is the granddaddy of all re release platforms for classic films and, lately, they are batting 1000.

First up is the lost film noir Ride the Pink Horse, in fabulous black and white Blu-ray. This is one that hardly shows up on TCM and is a must own. Directed by its star Robert Montgomery with an Academy award nominated performance from classic character actor Thomas Gomez, the rough tough picture is based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, who also wrote the novel upon which perhaps my favorite Bogart movie, In a Lonely Place was based. There are of course tons of extras.

Another crime thriller, this one from the early 70s, is also receiving the Criterion Blu-ray treatment. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, based on the novel by George V. Higgins, the late, great, George V. Higgins, stars a perpetually weary Robert Mitchum, need we say more, as a low life Boston crime figure in over his head. In fact, wasn’t Mitchum always in over his head. Extras here too and a must own.

The great Jean Paul Belmondo stars in two influential and still wildly funny comedies from the Cohen Collection – the first, That Man from Rio, is a real find and a sight to behold on Blu-ray. This spy spoof released in the throes of James Bondage but plays as fresh as the day it was released. Up to His Ears is also available in this package, another Belmondo classic that has the same sense of humor as some of the wonderful Blake Edwards pictures of the same era.

Also this month from Cohen is a personal favorite – Hotel Sahara, directed by Ken Annakin and starring two time Oscar winner and legendary performer Peter Ustinov, as well as Yvonne De Carlo and David Tomlinson, he of Mary Poppins.

Actually, give this wonderful company a hard look. They love movies and I’m proud to know them.

There are two recent Blu-ray pictures released from Olive Films that I must take the time to discuss, both from the heyday, so it seems, of Republic Pictures.

Stranger at the Door, directed by the William Whitney, the man who no less than Quentin Tarantino says is his supreme influence (also he’s from Oklahoma) is one of the weirdest B picture westerns ever made, and absolutely stunning.

I think this movie had to be one of the first in Hollywood, actually released in 1956, to use generic religion as its key element, with minister MacDonald Carey trying to reform seemingly unredeemable outlaw Skip Homier (an actor who gave it all up and is still among us – he also made an independent feature in Norman, Oklahoma directed by my favorite all time OU professor Ned Hockman). There are some stunts in this film, especially one by what must have been a real wild horse, that are as exciting and cogent as any Avengers picture today. This picture is highly rated and a collector’s item for any lover of the great Hollywood westerns of the 50s.

Also from Olive, is a treasure called The Shanghai Story, which, in 1954, was directed by one of the true giants of American cinema Frank Lloyd, he of the original Mutiny on the Bounty and now almost 20 years later toiling in “B” movies. The Shanghai Story is a distant cousin to Grand Hotel, with a disparate group of western expatriates held prisoner in a Shanghai hotel by the commies. In 90 minutes, this one covers it all and stars noir icon Edmond O’Brien, who that same year would win his Oscar for The Barefoot Contessa and Ruth Roman, a classic Hollywood beauty who had been in Strangers on a Train several years before and worked until her death in the late 70s. Also in this picture is an impossibly young Richard Jaeckel, one of Hollywood’s most reliable character actors.

Also available from Olive is Billy Wilder’s masterful Kiss Me Stupid, which would have been much better had original star Peter Sellers not have taken ill, Without a Clue, a terribly overlooked Sherlock Holmes comedy with Ben Kingsley and, again, a splendid Michael Caine and The Beat Generation, an oddball picture of all oddballs, with Steve Cochran, Ray Danton and Mamie Van Doren.

Our terrific friends at Twilight Time read my dreams. They keep releasing these marvelous Blu-ray extravaganzas in very, very limited qualities. Here’s one I must mention specifically.

The Fortune, I think, was considered a dud when it was hit theaters. It’s not. Talk about your all star team, this period piece, released in the mid 70s starred Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, both never better, and was directed by Mike Nichols, who I still can’t believe isn’t with us anymore. If any copies of this comedy, which was never on VHS and never plays on TV, remain in the Twilight Time library, get your copy immediately while you still can.

This month Twilight Time makes available The Story of Adele H., Francois Truffaut’s fabulous tale of obsessive love, starring Isabelle Adjani; The Fantisticks, a wonderful transfer of the classic stage musical, directed by Michael Ritchie; a 1930s based Richard III, starring Ian McKellen, re creating his stage role with other cast Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr. and Annette Benning; Pat Boone and Shirley Jones in April Love, with a lovely score by Alfred Newman; Anthony Hopkins’ greatest film portrayal, as the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day, with Emma Thompson and the legendary English character actor Peter Vaughan, still kicking at 92 and my personal favorite of the lot, the weirdo Zardoz directed by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery.

I’ve mentioned several westerns in this column and, if you are even remotely interested in their cinematic development and the novels upon which they are based, or actually any movie at all, look up my friend Cullen Gallagher. Get on Facebook with him and join the discussion. He and I usually talk… oh, maybe every night, but he’s a young man with both vision and understanding of how that vision was created. He has a wonderful website, pulpsernade.com that he should update more.

Sorry, I’ve not been here. I missed a bit – I’ll admit it and it for sure wasn’t to do with health or disinterest or a lack in passion. I just had to do stuff. But now I’m back.

But I come with good stories. Specifically regarding how movie awards season works. [Read on here...]

I learned a valuable lesson this year. I love the Oscars not for the telecast or the fashions or even really the stars. I want to watch because it’s American cultural history – a snapshot of our world at that moment the “Best Picture” award is given. And, like everyone else, I have my favorites and what I felt over time were disingenuous selections. Kramer vs. Kramer over Apocalypse Now? Dustin Hoffman in KvK over Peter Sellers in Being There? Sally Field over Bette Midler? And movies I find have no place alongside Casablanca, Gigi, In the Heat of the Night and Out of Africa such as A Beautiful Mind, The Artist and The King’s Speech?

I used to really care about that stuff.

Now I get it. These awards are not given to what will later be judged as the true best picture of that particular year. Remember, Raging Bull didn’t win “Best Picture.”

It’s all about the campaign. Here’s an example.

Early on in the fall I received a screener for the Warner Brothers’ prestige picture The Judge, starring Robert Downey, Robert Duvall and Billy Bob Thornton. I had already seen the movie in the theater and knew it for the dud it was. Robert Duvall is so precious to watch that I would nominate him for anything in which he appears. But this movie was so pedestrian that even could the acting legend save it; I would be hard pressed to nominate him at all since the movie was so crappy.

And in my mind, the race to watch this year is that of “Supporting Actor.” You have Ed Norton, J.K. Simmons, Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke plus several contenders like Tommy Lee Jones, Martin Short, Josh Brolin and others. All from cutting edge, potentially legendary movies. Then there’s The Judge and Robert Duvall.

First, I got the screener. For those of you who have never seen an awards screener, they come in a special package with a listing of who the studio feels should be nominated for any particular award, actually, it is now all contractual with the actors, directors and below the line specialists. So for The Judge it lists the producers to be nominated for “Best Picture,” Downey as “Best Actor,” and Duvall and Billy Bob in the “Supporting Actor” column. I blew them all off. The Judge was a wasted opportunity in my book.

But then I started getting calls, and emails and autographed posters and it was daily, non-stop. All campaigning for Duvall.

And sure enough, when the BFCA nominations came out, there he was. And he was there for every other awards show where nominations are given.

This isn’t against Robert Duvall at all. They should give him 20 Oscars.

You remember Albert Brooks in a terrific movie called Drive? He won every critics award but was shut out for an Oscar nomination No I know how idiotic things like that happen. Last year, the same thing happened to Robert Redford for All Is Lost.

Now, for this year’s movies, there have been some dandies. Here are the mini reviews that I do on KRXO radio here in Oklahoma City.

Whiplash

Like the driving rhythms of the big band jazz music it celebrates, Whiplash is brassy, bold, inventive and terribly fun. We’ve seen the plot before – young musician works his fingers to the bone, in this case, literally, to make it to the top. This picture carries more exuberance than any picture I’ve seen in yours. It is my sincere hope that it finds a wide audience and, perhaps the fact that J.K. Simmons as a ruthless music educator is a lock for a best supporting actor Oscar might give this little movie the recognition is deserves.

The Homesman

The Homesman is the most underrated movie of the past decade. Tommy Lee Jones directs and stars in this elegiac, leisurely paced, matter of fact western that offers twists and turns at every step. Of special recognition is Hilary Swank. A friend of mine once said that there are actors that should be retired from Oscar consideration – I think Swank and Jones both fit into this category. Based on a book by Glendon Swarthout, who also wrote The Shootist this is a movie that will for sure find its audience. A little masterpiece.

Foxcatcher

A National Enquirer story given a New Yorker treatment. And with an OU connection to boot – all seen through the eyes of Bennett Miller who, after Capote and Moneyball is slowly, quietly become one of America’s finest writer directors. This is a true crime story, to be sure, but it’s really about society and the American class system. Not to be missed

The Imitation Game

Blah, blah, blah. This WWII story, perhaps one of the most important of the 20th century is told with such sense of windbagedness that it almost becomes irrelevant. Everybody acts wonderfully, the story is told with great care and even it’s most lurid moments are so sanitized that you think you’re watching with the Queen. Not bad at all, some really like it and I certainly appreciate its intentions but, yawn.

Selma

I got this one not at all. Actually, it’s no better than a CBS TV Movie starring Ben Vereen and Art Carney. John Frankheimer’s Wallace mini-series told the story more effectively. Sort of ridiculous dialogue, plot miscues and absolutely nonsensical scenes. Let’s not mistake this exploitation picture for the real event. Let’s opt for a re-viewing of Malcom X instead.

Nightcrawler

A massive indictment of the American media. We’re talking comparisons to Network here. Jake Gyllenhall plays what turns out to be an obsequious male component of the Faye Dunaway character in that classic 1976 Sidney Lumet film. Satire is on the plate here and it’s a full course meal.

American Sniper

An all American flag waver, and yet another tribute to the skills, the incomparable skills of Clint Eastwood as a consummate filmmaker. This movie was rushed into production and there are times that it is apparent, but one has to marvel at its construction, pacing and sense of purpose. So what if the fake baby is a tad too obvious? Steven Spielberg had been scheduled to direct and one can only imagine the sentimental slop he would have made of this material

Inherent Vice

The fist movie you’ll ever walk out of with a contact high. This loopy, paranoid, sexually deviant nod to both the California coast at the time and the classic Raymond Chandler private detective story is one for the ages in the eyes of this reviewer. There are those I’m sure who would call this “Incoherent Vice” as the plot details remind us of the Bob Segar classic Night Moves. Working on mysteries without any clues.”

Birdman

So original, fast and thrilling, one is prompted to watch it twice a day. With its rat a tat tat soundtrack, a frenetic show stopping performance by Michael Keaton and a whole slew of maniacs running around backstage like they were in a third rate touring company of Noises Off, you’ll need to take a downer after the final credits. There’s more energy, creativity and insight into the dynamic business that is show than any 100 movies. A keeper for the ages.

Still Alice

TV movie claptrap. After magnificent contributions to films from Short Cuts to End of the Affair to especially Far From Heaven this is for what Julienne Moore wins an Oscar?

Into the Woods

Sublime. This film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical is a treasure and a box office hit to boot. Of the perfect cast, Emily Blunt hits the highest note, but it’s all good, all wonderful.

Here’s my general state of the union messaging regarding the release of classic films on home video – we’re living in a renaissance. It all, I’m sure, comes down to the bottom line – these titles are selling, however, it always does take somewhat of a leap of faith in the constant struggle between art and commerce, to do the right thing by these sometimes lost pieces of the world cultural puzzle.

New on Blu-ray and DVD

The fine folks at Olive Films have gone into overdrive, releasing a slew of rare classics that come to us as a gift from heaven.

Track the Man Down, from 1955, is a splendid and totally lost crime film, directed by R.G. “Buddy” Springsteen (who was, by the way, Dale Robertson’s favorite director ever.) This picture stars Broadway legend George Rose and British music icon Petulia Clark and it’s a monster find.

The Woman They Almost Lynched, is a western directed by the late Allan Dwan and starring these champion “B” actors Joan Leslie, Brian Donlevy, Audrey Totter and John Lund.

World For Ransom, which is somewhat of a minor classic, directed by legendary filmmaker Robert Aldrich and starring Dan Duryea and, yes, Nigel Bruce. World For Ransom is an absolute must see.

Coming soon from Olive are titles such as Without a Clue, one of my favorite comedies, with Ben Kinglsey and Michael Caine (if you haven’t seen this one, you’re missing a delight); Billy Wilder’s infamous Kiss Me Stupid with Dean Martin; The Night They Raided Minsky’s, with Jason Robards and Britt Eckland and Best Seller, starring James Woods and Brian Dennehy.

Twilight Time –This company is absolutely firing on all cylinders, putting out so many lost and deserted classics to pristine Blu-ray that it defies imagination.

First of all, I have to personally thank my friends at TT for releasing what I think is a lost masterpiece of 70s comedy – The Fortune, directed by Mike Nichols and starring no less than Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. How can this be lost? No idea but it’s damn funny – I saw it in the theater like ten times. If you don’t know it, The Fortune as good as you would hope it would be.

Another personal favorite – Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing an absolutely terrifying thriller from the early sixties that features a rare, non showy lead role for Olivier, which would make this worth watching even if one weren’t trying to figure out the ending. This is a must see.

Also among Twilight Time’s new releases are the Elvis Presley/Don Siegel western Flaming Star, The Twilight Samurai, the animated masterpiece When the Wind Blows, Stanley Kramer’s massive Judgment at Nuremberg, which still shocks after some 50 years and John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz, which features perhaps Burt Lancaster’s greatest role along with, wearing hair, Telly Savalas.

Remember Twilight Time movies are in stunning, restored Blu-ray and only 3,000 copies of each are made. Go to screenarchives.com and, as well, like twlighttimemovies on Facebook.

I must also include a “must see” from screenarchives.com

Redwind Productions in association with Cinerama brings us for the very first time, a lost and remastered 70mm treat – Michael Todd Jr’s Holiday in Spain, which stars Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas and Denhom Elliot. Wow! Originally titled Scent of Mystery, this movie was released in Smell of Vision. Sounds like John Waters’ Polyester! This movie has been considered lost for 50 years!

Warner Archive sort of settled down their rampaging release schedule, turning instead to some of Warner Brothers’ early DVD releases and fixing their aspect ratios and other restorations – titles here include The Man With Two Brains.

Other new releases include some Spencer Tracy/Jimmy Stewart early talkies, including The Murder Man; The Wild Affair a comedy with Terry-Thomas and Nancy Kawn and Born Reckless, with Mamie Van Doren!

Go to warnerarchive.com – their new releases come up every Tuesday

Here’s a personal favorite from SHOUT! factory – the complete 1968 Live at Boston Garden James Brown concert as depicted, in part, in the singer’s new biopic, Get On Up. I got to see the “Godfather of Soul” twice and met him once and am an unabashed fan. How about this? In Oklahoma City, we have an actual living, breathing Bittersweet!

Also from SHOUT! is the complete series of Sergeant Bilko/The Phil Silvers Show – this series was lost to me – the reruns never played when I was a kid – but they’re hilarious.

And I must also mention UHF, cult movie of all cult movies, starring “Weird” Al Yankovic and produced by Oklahoma’s own Gray Frederickson. This movie was filmed in Tulsa.

Visit shoutfactory.com for other titles.

Finally, Flicker Alley has released a honest to goodness true oddity – Search for Paradise and Seven Wonders of the World, both made for Cinerama, the three projection wide screen process which was also employed by How the West Was Won and 2001. These Blu-rays have extras out the wazoo and are for sure keepers.

Flickeralley.com – I must, before we move on, mention a new novel called The Long and Faraway Gone, written by my friend Lou Berney and set all in Oklahoma City. Seriously, how does one tell a good friend they have written one of the great books of all time? Without it sounding sycophantic? This book has already won rare raves from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus and is already the Amazon “Book of the Month” for February. I promise you will love this book. I’m holding out for a decent part when the movie is cast!

I’ve gotten a hoot out of it – have loved reconnecting with high school friends and long lost family and have discovered as well that there are people in the world with pages dedicated to interests close to my heart, such as those kept by my favorite authors, pictures of the New York I loved in the 70s and 80s and tributes to great character actors such as Timothy Carey. [Read on here...]

And then there are the games, which are far over my head, and the questions such as how many of the top 100 movies have you seen? (I was 99 because I still haven’t seen the Lord of the Rings) or what character from The Waltons I most resemble.

Recently however, a longtime friend challenged me to answer this question – “What movie changed the way I look at life?”

That got me. It’s a good question. I think it’s safe to say, at least in my case, that movies, and, to a lesser extent, at least at that time in my life, television, were perhaps the strongest cultural influence to which a kid from Purcell, Oklahoma was exposed. Television programming was such that local stations ran old pictures all the time, we had a local theater and a drive in and I had access to big city first run houses as well.

I sat down and worked hard on this list, mostly for myself. And, if this is indeed correct, it looks like movies stopped taking on a substantial role in my life as I was entering college.

Take this exercise yourself and send me a copy. What better way to get to know each other?

These are alphabetical:

Ace in the Hole – I became a journalism major after seeing this movie – I wanted to be Chuck Tatum (regally played by Kirk Douglas), not the drunk, loutish, has been Chuck Tatum, but the guy who could sit down at an old Underwood a pop out a coherent story in minutes. I’m still trying to accomplish that. Of course, this movie offers a pivotal example of Billy Wilder cynicism and, for better or worse, that has stayed with me as well.

Blazing Saddles – The first R rated movie to which I was ever allowed to see with my parents. Race jokes? Fart jokes? Endowment jokes? Crudity, even at that time in my life, didn’t appeal to me – and it isn’t necessarily the specific jokes that made laugh, although I quote it all the time – I love this picture’s unrepentant naughtiness and the unapologetic manner in which it is delivered. I had never seen anything like it and, if you think about it, what has topped it since?

Duck Soup – Do I need to explain this? Absurdist humor, gleeful patter and Harpo swimming in that lemonade tub. Every time I watch I catch something new – Groucho, in the middle of the final climactic battle, takes a boater off a hat rack and says “This is the last straw!” I try to be Groucho every day of the week. And fail.

It’s a Gift – Is W.C. Fields forgotten? I remember during a 1970s renaissance of the irascible writer/actor, Walter Matthau, no slouch himself, called Fields the silver screen’s greatest comedian. From Fields, one understands the comic potential of domesticity, society and family. And, in this instance, a blind man and some light bulbs.

Sleeper – I was with my family to see this “G” rated comedy. And, when Woody Allen is being spoon fed upon his awakening in the new century, my father was doubled over. I’d never seen that before. When people tell me they don’t like Woody Allen, I’ll deliberately quote lines from this.

Pinocchio – Come on, watch it and don’t cry. Fathers and sons, pure hearts, true friendship and life affirmation. I only read later that the movie represents the penultimate of Disney’s hand drawn craftsmanship. Actually, when people ask my favorite song, I always say “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Real life should be like this.

True Grit – Heroism. Redemption. Humor. American determinism and southwestern chivalry. And John Wayne. I have never investigated this, but True Grit was released in 1969 with an “M” rating which during, in its year-long year run, was changed to a “G.” Check the posters! An adult film that kids loved. Of course, the book would introduce me to the written words of Charles Portis, my favorite author. I still quote it.

Twilight’s Last Gleaming – This slot could be filled with The Parallax View, The Manchurian Candidate, or Three Days of the Condor. They are all paranoid grown up thrillers, but somehow this Robert Aldrich/Burt Lancaster collaboration from 1977 carried the idea that there were darker forces at work in America the furthest. It blew me away. It isn’t been seen or discussed much anymore, and I think it has been held back deliberately because of its jaw dropping ending, although very recently Olive Films released a fabulous Blu-ray. This one not for the faint of heart.

Way Out West – Suppose the whole world had to stop for one hour per year and watch this movie together? While other American comedies have found translation rough going, Laurel and Hardy spread happy malfeasance to the darkest corners of the globe. And, of course, if that wasn’t enough, Stan and Ollie stop in the middle of the proceedings to perform a two or three minute dance that is my favorite scene in any movie anywhere.

A Wedding – I knew that everyday life was funny from a young age, but A Wedding was a major revelation as it validated to me that we were all in one big comedy, No movie ever influenced me more and, from that time, I was first in line to every Robert Altman movie that followed. Some say he translated his message better with Nashville and MASH but this one I saw with the two dearest friends I’ll ever have and the light bulb, in 1978, went off over all our heads.

I’m dying to read your lists – I’ll print them here.

Available on Disc

For years Film Comment ran a column in which a director or actor would list their “Guilty Pleasures” movies that were remembered fondly even though they pretty much stank on ice. This 1976 remake of the Howard Hawks/Humphrey Bogart classic is totally wrongheaded from the outset, Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles transplanted to jolly old London? Nuts. But here’s the deal, Marlowe was played, as was he in 1974’s period masterpiece Farewell, My Lovely, by Robert Mitchum, with that fabulous hair and weathered face and cynical delivery and it’s such joy to see this lion in winter that you can’t stop watching. There’s also a lot of nudity from Oklahoma’s own Candy Clark and Richard Boone, who never made enough movies for me, plays Lash Kanino and Oliver Reed and James Stewart show up and I saw it in the theater about five times. The Big Sleep is out on DVD from Timeless Media.

Every week Warner Archive releases absolute treasures and I can’t wait to see what’s next. Several lately are worth mentioning. In 1970, MGM released a film version of Elmore Leonard’s novel The Moonshine War, starring those two bastions of southern acting Alan Alda and Patrick McGoohan. It was a major flop and was never on TV or VHS. Finally, WA released this gem and, surprise, it’s pretty wonderful. Leonard’s standard plot and characters remain righteous to the book and Richard Widmark becomes of the great Leonard bad guys of all time, and playing his equally odious partner in crime is the Lee Hazelwood, Oklahoma’s own, who maybe never was in a movie again.

Three years later, MGM went to the hillbilly well again with a picture called Lolly Madonna XXX. Now this I saw in the theaters and it holds up well, and what a cast – Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Season Hubley and a very young Oklahoma boy named Gary Busey.

Also from Warner Archive is another treasure rarely on TV and never on VHS. It’s called The Lusty Men and it’s a sort of rodeo noir directed by the great Nicholas Ray and starring Mitchum, again, and Susan Hayward. This is a terrific lost movie and kudos to Warner Archive for its release. WA also recently put Out of the Past on Blu-ray as well!

Those of us who love our classic films just can’t wait for the next wave from Twilight Time monthly releases again – all restored in marvelous Blu-ray. First and foremost is Sam Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite, starring James Caan and Robert Duvall. TT co founder Nick Redmond is a Peckinpah genius and his contribution to this disc is essential.

Also from TT is the home video debut of an oddball picture from the 70s Che, about that Che, starring Jack Palance, one of the world’s great South American actors directed by that noted ethnic Richard Fleischer. Actually, it’s very engaging. Also on the slate this month Salvador, an important picture from Oliver Stone that unleashed James Woods on an unsuspecting audience.

I’ve always said that Frederick Forsyth was an author well treated by the movies, from The Day of the Jackal, to The Fourth Protocol; TT this month releases the author’s The Dogs of War, a crackerjack movie starring Christopher Walken and directed by John Irvin.

Finally, Lou Diamond Phillips played Richie Valens in La Bamba, which is painstaking restored by Twilight Time as well.

What do you remember about The Midnight Special? I think back to Friday nights, when it aired weekly, and the fabulous music it featured. Remember the first ever video that aired, Elton John and Kiki Dee singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart?” The entire set is now available from Time Life Home Video and is a must own.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s glorious Cinderella is currently selling out the Broadway Theater in New York but most of us of a certain age remember falling in love with a young, beautiful Lesley Ann Warren in the title role. The Shout! Factory has released this version on a wonderful DVD and it is both nostalgic and cogent at the same time.

Finally, the Cohen Media Group has released Nightcap, a late masterpiece from the French Hitchcock Claude Chabrol. It’s killer.

Here are a couple of other stories from the salt mines of Oklahoma location scouting. There’s many, many more. But I can only bore so much..

Both tales involve the terrific writer, film critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter. In his 1993 novel Point of Impact, Hunter created the character Bob Lee “The Nailer” Swagger, which has now been featured, along with his father, Earl, in some 12 novels, the most recent of which is Sniper’s Honor. [Read on here...]

Although Hunter is originally from Kansas City, his books are set in southwestern Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma. That may not sound like much difference to you, but my friends in the Arkansas film commission were still smarting from the fact that they lost True Grit to Colorado. Don’t feel too sorry for them now, they have a native son named Billy Bob Thornton who has put the state back on the Hollywood map, although the fight was on then, as Oklahoma had just lost Far and Away, which was a double sting because director Ron Howard was born in the Sooner state.

So one day, out of the blue, I invited Mr. Hunter to come visit Oklahoma in order to scout locations for the film version of Point of Impact. I promised him some beautiful scenery, lots of good Hillbilly food and, as he was a noted gun enthusiast, a fact not unknown by his readers, some darn good open range shootin’.

So in he flew and off we went. It was amazing, he wrote about Oklahoma and Arkansas with a unique perspective, although he had only driven through both states a single time. I worked him pretty hard, actually, because his contract gave him producer credit in the movie.

At the time, Tommy Lee Jones had signed to play Bob Lee in the movie and, as Oklahoma City was some 200 miles from the area portrayed in the book, I learned a lot about how Hollywood treats an author while on the road. Paramount wanted the Bob Lee character forever if it made Point of Impact and Hunter had deep reservations about that. I took him along perhaps the prettiest part of our state, the Talimena Skyline Drive, which is the only road in the southwestern United States built just for its view.

So we took pictures and found locations and I thought we were all a go. We made our goodbyes and I told our Lt. Governor that we had a deal. Until Tommy Lee fell out and Paramount wanted drastic script changes that would make the character younger. Of course this was Stephen’s fault not at all, he was sorta ripped off too.

Until in 2007, when Paramount finally released Shooter with Mark Wahlberg as Bob Lee. And, oh yes, all filmed in Illinois, if I recall.

But my interaction Stephen Hunter didn’t end there. While in the car, he told me about a new book he was conjuring. He wanted to know all about our state penitentiary in McAlester, he wanted to know the terrain of southwestern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas in the Panhandle. To be honest, I had forgotten about it until, several years later, a novel called Dirty White Boys, written by Hunter, was published. Every scene in the book took place in Oklahoma. I was fired up once again.

Dirty White Boys has a sort of simple plot, Lamar Pye (how about that for a bad guy moniker) and some other ruffians break out of McAlester and go a killing rampage. To stop them, the state of Oklahoma brings out of retirement Bud (when people ask I always see he’s named for me, although I’m sure he isn’t) Pewtie Mayhem ensues.

Dirty White Boys was an immediate hit on the best seller lists and MGM bought the book for legendary filmmaker John Frankenheimer, who was hot again thanks to much success in the world of television – where he originally started. At the time he was just off Against the Wall, Andersonville and George Wallace.

At the time, there was much excitement over the production of this film and I was on the phone to Hunter almost every day. At that time Shooter hadn’t been made and he was rather sick of the whole enterprise, but was reassured time and again by the studio honchos that this was a “go” film.

I wore Frankenheimer slick. Slick. In my mind, he never really made a bad movie, but after such classics as The Young Savages, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May and, especially, The Train, he had plowed back in the 1980s with a completely nasty adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s 52 Pickup. He was very nice and pretended to put up with all my questions. (Actually, for my money, Frankenheimer is the best hands down with director’s comments on his DVDs.)

We needed two locations to make the picture work, and you would think, in Oklahoma, they would have been easily located. They weren’t. The script was significantly different from the novel – Frankenheimer wanted a younger cast instead of Hunter’s dream team of Harrison Ford and, again, Tommy Lee Jones.

Our first scene took place in a rock quarry pool, where our hero and his lady friend were, well, skinny dipping. I made sure I’d be on set when we rolled film here. My location scout, a dear friend to this day named Joel Manning and I drove all over the state. There were rock quarry pools all around, but ours needed to have overlooks for the camera angles. We finally found one or two, they weren’t perfect, but they might satisfy the location scout from MGM.

(Here’s an aside, Joel is a former policeman, with a Wambaugh-like sense of humor, and I were scouting around a large lake when we heard gunshots. Ex cops are particularly un fond of that noise so we went to the source and found two half wits shooting at cans in the middle of the lake. As we were walking away from this waste of ammo, Joel leaned over and said “those guys are going to be heroes some day if we ever get attacked by cans!)

Our next location was trickier. We had to found a white farm house that would, during wheat harvesting time, have wheat grown all the way around it on all four sides. At the end, our two principals settle their differences with, bless ‘em, wheat thrashers. We looked in over 50 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties and sorta found one that could work, but wheat would have to be artificially planted.

Frankenheimer went back to L.A. for casting and soon we heard that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were circling the roles and the only holdup was who would play who. And it was during this time that the Weinstein Brothers’ new Miramax offshoot Dimension Films snapped up Frankenheimer for a script that had already packaged, ironically, with Ben Affleck, as well as Charlize Theron and Gary Sinise called Reindeer Games. Movie. Officially. Dead.

We had some major success stories in Oklahoma. Raise your hand if you saw Twister or The Outsiders. I just think “what if” movies are pretty fascinating.

The Latest Classics on Disc

The Shout! Factory has, this month, topped itself with some almost earth shattering classic releases.

First, the Shout! Factory has released two features long on everybody’s want list.

Starting with Hard Times, when a Walter Hill picture was release, it meant something. No nonsense, plenty of action, great stars. Hill’s reputation began to grow through such movies as The Long Riders, The Warriors, Streets of Fire and The Driver. In 1981 he released a film called Southern Comfort that was a major critical success and a fabulous action film and now Shout! has rescued it from obscurity and it’s a Blu-ray find. Keith Carradine, with whom I have spent much time and has been in more great films than Olivier, stars as well as Hill perennial Powers Boothe as National Guardsmen fighting the elements and some nesters in the Louisiana swamps.

Also from Shout! is my dear departed friend Allen Saied’s favorite film Phantom of the Paradise, starring Paul Williams in a rock and roll valentine set to the familiar Phantom of the Opera storyline, released in 1974.

And while these are important releases, they’re a drop in the bucket compared to the company’s two new box sets.

First up is an amazing limited edition Blu-ray box set celebrating the work of seminal director Werner Herzog, with 16 films on 13 discs, 15 of which are on home video for the first time. Included here are some of the greatest films of all time – Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Heart of Glass, My Best Fiend and the splendid, splendid Fitzcarraldo. There are also other special features and films and the first hundred people who order this fabulous gift will receive their set autographed by Herzog.

But here’s the gem of them all. There are those of us who feel The Marx Brothers didn’t work hard enough, whereas comedians like Laurel and Hardy made short after short and feature after feature, the Marx Brothers, well, didn’t. But now the Shout! Factory has released The Marx Brothers TV Collection that is an absolute must own. From guest appearances, to commercials, to chat shows and everything else, except for the complete You Bet Your Life series, already released by Shout! and Groucho’s turn as the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado. You can’t stop watching it.

From Twilight Time, comes a diverse set of titles which are all wonderfully restored and only 3,000 copies each.

First, we have to give a shout out to fellow Oklahoman and friend Gary Busey. He was Oscar nominated for The Buddy Holly Story in 1978 and it is presented here in all its glory. Busey actually set the tone for others in bio pics with his wondrous performance. The disc comes with Busey’s commentary (bet that’s a hoot!) and other Twilight Time regular features. Staying with rock and roll, Twilight Time is also releasing its first Elvis movie Follow That Dream from 1962.

Man Hunt is part noir part spy thriller from 1941 starring Walter Pigeon and directed by Fritz Lang and English director Ken Loach is represented with two of his comedies on in one package Ladybug, Ladybug and Raining Stones.

Twilight Time’s offbeat find of the month is a small film which should have had a bigger audience – Stanley Kramer’s The Secret of Santa Vittoria, starring Anthony Quinn. Released in 1969, the comedic tale offers a group of villagers in Italy working together to save their precious homemade wine from the Nazis. Great fun.

Warner Archive releases so much material, a new batch every week, that it’s hard to keep up. But they’re all treasures. In the last month there have been a slate of film noirs (Chase a Crooked Shadow, The Counterfeit Plan and The Crooked Road) films starring Glenn Ford (Trial, and Advance to the Rear) and the great comedian Joe E. Brown (who once, supposedly, danced with my grandmother) Elmer the Great, You Said a Mouthful and Broad Minded. Next up for Warner Archive? Blu-ray discs of perhaps the greatest of all film noirs Out of the Past and Blake Edwards’ comedy extravaganza The Great Race.

Anybody know a good screenwriter? Here’s true scenario that would offer a perfect studio pitch.

And it’s a thriller, in a way, with a determined adventurer racing against time to seek justice for a hero from a past generation – one who sacrificed finances, reputation and goodwill to slay a dragon that was, in the long run, perhaps beyond even his reach.

This story is about John Wayne. This story is about Robert Harris. This story is about America and the importance of its cultural maintenance. And, ok, it’s also about personal obsession. Duke Wayne did what he said. No backing out. No cutting corners. No half assed. [Read on here...]

There are those who will argue that a poll be taken today, some 35 years after he died, John Wayne would remain the number one star in the world. In Scott Eyman’s compulsory new book John Wayne, he is described as a thoughtful, literate and savvy motion picture business insider workhorse who was among the first superstars to produce his own films as well as a hell of a fine actor.

In the late 1940s, a after triumphant rise and astonishing fall resulting from a huge 1930 dud called The Big Trail, Wayne was back on top after being cast in the still influential western Stagecoach and was a contract star for Herbert Yates at Republic pictures when he announced that he wanted to star and direct a film about the 1836 battle of the Alamo. While the subject matter was important to Wayne, according to Eyman, the star also knew to sustain in his particular field he would have to diversify.

“Actors aren’t supposed to have a brain in their heads, but I had enough to know if I was going to stay in the business I was going to have to start moving up the ladder,” he said.

Yates, after making promise after promise to Wayne, finally passed on the Alamo project and that same day, the Duke packed up his offices and never made another film for Republic, although it was during this next chapter in his life that he would do some his finest and most financially rewarding work – from Red River to Fort Apache and from The Quiet Man for which Wayne directed a scene or two, to The Searchers. So toxic was Wayne’s Alamo project that Warner Brothers, the studio which presented The Searchers and which housed Wayne’s production company Batjac, passed on the project. It didn’t matter. John Wayne was going to produce and direct The Alamo no matter what anyone said.

And so in 1956, saying that his career, personal fortune and standing in the business were at stake, John Wayne made deal after deal with United Artists, who invested $2.5 million of the ultimately $12 million budget, Texas oilmen and other independent investors. He began what became a year-long project to build his set and oversaw every single dimension of the film’s creation. Recognizing what a chore it would be to bring his dream project to the screen, Wayne was initially only going to make a cameo appearance in the movie – it was only after United Artists made his starring in the movie a proviso for box office insurance that he decided to play Davy Crockett.

Wayne spared no production expense. Every dollar spent is on the screen. The production was historic and Wayne used his almost, at the time, 30 years in the film business to get the look and accuracy he wanted. The Alamo began production on September 9, 1959 and wrapped December 18 of that same year, some 17 days over schedule. Wayne shot a whopping 560,000 feet of film and lost twenty pounds while filming. He also continued mortgaging everything he owned to pump into the budget, while, at the same time, accepted other funds that would eventually diminish his ownership of the film.

“I have everything I own in it,” Wayne was quoted as saying.

As Wayne was editing the picture, he released a statement which might shed some insight into his determination to make the film at all costs.

“The best reminder of what makes this a great nation is what took place at the Alamo in San Antonio. It was there that 182 Americans holed up in an Adobe mission fought for 13 days and nights against 5,000 troops of the dictator Santa Anna. These 182 men killed 1,700 of the enemy before they were slaughtered because they didn’t think a bully should push them around.”

No grit, John Wayne? Not much.

When the picture opened, it was reviewed as a majestic achievement, with a subpar script. Even with luminaries such as John Ford and William Wyler telling him to edit the script before shooting, Wayne was so loyal to its writer James Edward Grant that The Alamo was shot as written, including speeches that were too long, romantic subplots that were meaningless and an overall sense of, well, cornball.

The Alamo was originally slated by UA to play a “roadshow engagement” with expensive reserved seats, however the type of people who attended those pictures, like Oklahoma! and Porgy and Bess were not necessarily John Wayne fans and it was ironic that a subpar Wayne film North to Alaska, in release at the same time, was outperforming The Alamo at the box office. The Alamo eventually went into general release in both domestic and foreign markets, where it amassed $15 million, which, what with prints, advertising and other costs represented a $2 million dollar loss.

In 1967, Wayne’s company, Batjac, sold all of its final ownership to UA and the studio owned the movie outright. After some thought of putting The Alamo back on screens in those pre home video days, the movie finally premiered on NBC television almost 11 years after it was released.

This is actually how our story begins.

After being created in 1919 by then superstars Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, United Artists studio was on lean times when it was taken over by attorneys turned producers Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin in 1951. From that point, it became a Hollywood mainstay – starting with The African Queen and later becoming home to such disparate artists as Burt Lancaster, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Stanley Kramer. Its first Best Picture Oscar was for Marty and the studio would later win for West Side Story and The Apartment. UA was the home for the James Bond films, the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns and the Pink Panther series. In the 70s, the studio was home to Woody Allen and Last Tango in Paris.

Krim and Benjamin, in 1978, left UA to form a company called Orion with Warner Brothers. The new team at UA immediately sank all the company’s resources into a little film called Heaven’s Gate.

United Artists was eventually sold to an MGM studio to form MGM/UA Entertainment. In 1985 Ted Turner bought the company for $1.5 billion and it was renamed MGM Entertainment Co. Turner then sold the UA portion of the studio to studio investor Kirk Kerkorian, while keeping the pre 1986 MGM film library for himself, which included all pre 1950 Warner Brothers pictures and all from RKO. The new Kerkorian led MGM Entertainment Co. had some produced hits in the 80s, such as the Bond film The Living Daylights and Rain Man but eventually became dormant.

In the early 90s an Italian promoter named Giancarlo Parretti bought the company but soon his bank, Credit Lyonais had to take over due to non payment and began production on new Bond and Pink Panther films. The studio bounced around again, at one time it was managed by Tom Cruise, but, by this point, UA is completely under the MGM logo and was listed as a co-producer of Fame, a remake of an MGM release, and Hot Tub Time Machine.

Today MGM is co financing movies and letting other studios distribute. It distributes those properties to international television as well as its other titles, which include product from, listen up here, United Artists, Orion, American International (Roger Corman pictures), Filmways (Dressed to Kill), The Cannon Group (52 Pickup), The Samuel Goldwyn Company (Sid and Nancy), Polygram (Fargo), Hemdale (The Terminator), Gladden (Fabulous Baker Boys), Castle Rock (Misery) and Island (Trip to Bountiful). It also owns Blue Velvet and Manhunter.

And, either because the classic films known by their MGM brand are now owned by Turner, or because management doesn’t see it as a profitable enterprise or because, after so many ownership groups have held the MGM name, there is no emotional investment, MGM, the all new MGM and owners of all the pictures we’ve been talking about like Sweet Smell of Success or Network or The Fortune Cookie or Annie Hall or, yes, The Alamo does not in any form or fashion have a film restoration department and, as we hear from the front lines, there are no plans to form such at all.

Enter now our digital dreamer, a righter of studio malfeasance – a sort of John T. Chance or Hondo Lane or Ethan Edwards. He restores pictures.

Robert A. Harris, perhaps the world’s most distinguished film preservationist wants to get his hands on The Alamo. He has taken on the big dogs like Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus and My Fair Lady and using his latest book of digital magic tricks has used modern technology to make them shine like, well, better than new.

Mr. Harris says that The Alamo is the highest profile studio film in the worst shape. He has preached non-stop to all of consequence that every day spent not restoring The Alamo is another day toward that film’s disintegration for all time. And, for some, he’s been saying it for too long.

The Alamo’s original negative is faded, missing a high percentage of its yellow layer, which controls blue and contrast, therefore yielding no true blacks and Crustacean-like facial highlights. Any attempt to pump color back into an analogue print turns the skies a muddy green, as yellow is added,” he said. “The negative also has additional damage due to improperly prepared black leader used in negative cutting, which has chemically attacked the emulsion through the two outermost dye layers. The original negative is unusable to make either prints or preservation elements. Add to those problems, a continuously moving discoloration coming in from both sides of the image.”

“The Alamo was released to roadshow audiences with an original running time of 192 minutes plus Overture, Entr’acte and Exit music. For general release, the film was cut by 30 minutes,” he said.

Harris says that as Wayne himself was in Africa shooting Hatari, a picture into which he immediately went into to help stabilize his finances, Michael Wayne, who was John Wayne’s son and the president of his production company Batjac, along with The Alamo editor Stuart Gilmore shortened the movie themselves.

“Because the 6 track audio could only be either cut or slightly remixed, a detailed fine cut was not an option. Those involved in the cut were led to believe that the extant 70mm prints would be trimmed and resounded, and new printing matrices produced for the 35mm release in the shorter form – but that the original negative would not be harmed or modified,” he said. “That is not what occurred. The original negative and all protection elements, inclusive of the 65mm separation masters, were cut to conform to the new 161-minute length; the trims and deletions were destroyed – and the original 65mm separation masters, which would normally have served as an ultimate backup, were improperly produced and have focus issues.”

According to Harris, for over 30 years the pre-cut Roadshow version was lost until, in 1991, a lone surviving 70mm print was found in remarkably good condition in a film exchange in Toronto. This version of the film was released both VHS and Laser Disc, both extremely poor cousins of the digital platforms films enjoy today, and was then, well, discarded. Trashed. Dumped. Left for dead.

And Harris, because he’s the best at what he does in the world and because, well, he loves movies, wants this darn thing fixed for audiences to enjoy all over again, even though he understands that Wayne’s epic is most certainly not in the same league as, well, Lawrence of Arabia.

“Unfortunately, that unique remaining 70mm print is now totally faded,” he said, “and to better prepare for its transfer for laserdisc decades ago, it was chemically treated, which exacerbates vinegar syndrome, which eventually destroys film. While modern Eastman elements are robust with a long life expectancy, this is simply not the case for films made before the creation of Eastman 5250 color negative stock in 1961. All Eastman color stocks created before that point fade. Some more, some less, dependent upon a number of technical and storage factors, but the absolute is – they fade.”

So Harris, for longer than he would care to admit, knows the problem and knows how to fix it. And he would be in the laboratory at this very moment strengthening the sparkle in the old Duke’s eyes, but for one thing – the studio who owns the movie, remember them?, refuses to pay for its refurbishing, or allow donations to be made to save the film.

“For whatever reason, they do not see the benefit in restoring their films,” Harris said.

A very recent plea to MGM on behalf of The Alamo by Harris was, well, dismissed.

“We had discussion about the studio finally allowing the use of outside funding, but then they doubled back, and decided to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude. ‘Wait and see,’ for The Alamo, means losing the film in its large format glory. If there is no restoration effort at this time, it means that there may never be a restoration effort,” Harris said. “Several people have raised the concept of going to outside sources for funding. MGM has no interest in this mission, even if the film turns into industrial waste.”

Here would be Harris’ plan for the restoration.

“Our work would take about 10 to 12 months and the final result would be two versions of the film – the original Roadshow and the General Release, both with Overture, Intermission, Entr’acte and Exit Music,” he said. “I could see a major theatrical event projected restored in Digital Cinema in 4K that would come close to replicating the visual and aural splendor of The Alamo as it originally premiered in San Antonio on October 24, 1960, albeit in the general release version. The Roadshow cut of the film would be suitable for home video market, based upon the lower quality of extant elements. The general release version could go the 4k route.”

And the cost for all this? With a grimace, Harris says that it might be as high as $1.5 million.

What? That’s all?

To put it in perspective, the bottled water on your latest Tom Hanks’ picture has a higher budget.

MGM has given no response, other than that from Trish Francis, Sr. VP Library Rights Management. Her message reads:

“Thank you for your email. I have spoken with our Technical Services staff who assured me that the film is not in danger of being lost. They proactively and routinely monitor and assess the condition of the various elements of all of MGM’s films and take steps as needed to protect and preserve them. The film is a valuable part of film history and naturally want to protect it. We appreciate your interest in The Alamo. I will mention your concerns to the appropriate people.”

One can’t imagine them turning down a single or cumulative donation specifically toward the restoration of The Alamo. But, according to Harris, the thought has been given no traction.

“One of the most important ways people know of the extraordinary gift of freedom given to Texas and our nation by those who defended the Alamo is by virtue of this film,” he said. “Although an imperfect representation historically, John Wayne’s work brilliantly portrays that larger than life tale, capturing the hearts and creating lasting memories for all who experience this great film. We are attempting to pull this important film back from the very brink of extinction and preserve it for generations to come.”

All concerned wish there was a quick happy ending – that MGM would fork over a pittance or allow Harris and his band of renegades the opportunity to find the money through other avenues and then allow the master magician to perform his magic.

However, after visiting with Robert Harris, one is reminded of the terrific line Rooster Cogburn says to young Mattie Ross as she heads down to get water from a creek unescorted in True Grit:

For a long time, I had the honor of serving the people of Oklahoma as their state film commissioner. I took the job only because we hadn’t created yet the position of “Lord High Minister of Culture.” To know the movie business was but a small component of the being the liaison with Hollywood – the job was for the most part about locations, locations, locations and I knew every bright golden haze on every Sooner state meadow and every field of corn as high as an elephant’s eye. [Read on here...]

I’m going to be honest – a chimp could be a film commissioner. It’s not that hard. While I made it part of my job to begin an educational program in the technical aspects of movie production and also to cultivate young filmmakers in hopes they would one day shoot in my area, thus bringing the ever welcomed outside dollars into the state’s economy, what film commissioners do mostly is sit around the office with their feet on their desks, waiting around for the studios or independent producers to send out an “all skate” request, asking for pictures of specific locations from every state in the country. If the production company likes what is presented, a location scout will visit the area, usually to see the particular house or field or lake or urban skyline you have submitted up close and personal while also collecting information regarding the hard facts of filmmaking (labor costs, housing, incentives, etc) to present to the producer or director of the particular film. This is great – because film commissions with absolutely no chance of landing a certain picture (one set in Hawaii would never be filmed in Oklahoma, for example) could report back to the taxpayers that he or she were secretly “scouting” for George Clooney’s new movie The Descendants, or whatever.

One day I’m going to write a sort of history of location filmmaking in the View from the Cheap Seats column, however, in the meantime, here’s a truism: producers can find or recreate locations anywhere – The Great and Powerful Oz was filmed on a soundstage in Michigan after all – but, as in business, show or not, it all comes down to money. If a producer feels location shooting will enhance him movie thus making the returns more plentiful, they will quickly pack their bags to get out of LA and head wherever.

I’ve scouted for many pictures that were ultimately made and too many that were abandoned. Here’s probably the most famous abandoned movie that came my way and I remain convinced it would have shot in and around central Oklahoma had it not been thwarted.

Warner Brothers announced in the trades that Batman director Tim Burton would helm a Kevin Smith script for a Superman reboot starring Nicolas Cage. Yes, you read correctly. Pretty soon after the announcement, we got the word from Warner Brothers that the very hush hush Superman was looking for varied locations, including what anyone now would refer to as a “Tim Burton house,” stark white, all alone in a field with dead trees in the front yard. As we were publicly funded and taxpayers needed to see my budget was well spent, I let some of my friends in the local news media know that I was scouting for a “new big budget super hero film” from Warner Brothers and I was on every local station that night saying everything but “It’s a bird…” I didn’t think we would land Superman in a million years.

However, I did find the house, on a lonely highway between Tuttle and Amber and quickly sent the pictures in. Some other pictures I took must have resonated, because a location scout called the next day and said he was coming to town to look at central Oklahoma. It was after the guy got here, however, that things became interesting. Oklahoma City’s downtown has two very cool looking structures, one, sadly, that is about to be smithereened. The first is our Botanical Gardens, built in the 70s which looks like a glass walled space station and the building we refer to now as the “former Stage Center” which is just nutso weird. The Warner Brothers rep went ga ga over both and sent word to Mr. Burton that “this you gotta see.”

So here he came. And he was cool. And he ate a big steak and had to sleep in hotel where all the windows opened.

Then we were standing on a street corner in Oklahoma City when Mt. Burton’s assistant’s cell phone rang and the young man started looking sickly. He handed the phone to Mr. Burton and HE started looking sickly. And I knew we were screwed.

I guess I was among the first to hear that Warner Brothers cancelled Superman over both script and budget problems. The franchise wouldn’t be re born until Superman Returns several years later.

Which they filmed entirely in Australia, although Oklahoma was represented – our good friend, OKC native Jimmy Marsden, was one of the leads.

John Wayne: The Life and Legend

As I previewed last month, I had the honor of having what turned out to be an hour conversation with Scott Eyman, author of this stunning new book about the professional and personal life of John Wayne, an actor who has been woefully underrepresented in the form of a substantive biography.

My first introduction to “Duke” (the name he truly answered to all his life) was True Grit in 1969. It was my first, at ten years old, “M” rated movie (it’s weird, I have seen posters that rated it “G”) and an impression was made. I started seeking out his older movies and sitting through his newer ones (Chisum and Rio Lobo) as many times as my parents would take me to the theater. I’ll never forget where I was when word came down he died and I wrote an amazingly amateur obit for the University of Oklahoma student newspaper. Eyman started his devotion to Wayne in a similar fashion – his starter, however, was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Then, over time, John Wayne diminished to me as leading men such as Lancaster and Mitchum and Holden and the like took his place. My issue was, aside from serious acting in his great pictures, Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, there were just too many incomprehensible duds like Big Jim McClain, Blood Alley, The Green Berets and The Legend of the Lost, And forgive me, some of his John Ford pictures, like The Quiet Man, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, were all sort of too full of malarkey for me.

However John Wayne: The Life and Legend gives us so much insight into the man’s character, passions and true love of the movie industry that one can’t help but look at the icon with a new appreciation.

Eyman was 21 when he happened onto a CBS soundstage for a 90 minute interview with John Wayne. To this day, Eyman describes him as informative, unpretentious and knowledgeable, and that’s the way Wayne is portrayed throughout the book. Eyman understands John Wayne and relates his countenance remarkably well – The Duke made so many movies because he loved making them, so what if the script or other elements weren’t up to par? He was the first on every set and the last to leave. He worked privately with stunt men, the camera operators and the script supervisors because that’s what he knew how to do. He treated everyone with remarkable respect and there wasn’t a costar or crew member who didn’t love him to the bottom of his boots.

There is a great, highly exaggerated line from The Sunshine Boys that I’ve used for years, usually with regard to Sinatra – “As a performer, nobody could touch him, as a human being, nobody wanted to.” While of course this in no way specifically refers to Wayne and Sinatra (although they were improbable dear friends) you get the drift. Wayne’s personal life, what with his intractable political stances and his three disastrous marriages don’t easily mesh with his artistic accomplishments or his professional nature – that’s why I would rather not discuss here at all, although Eyman, as a wonderful biographer, does with gusto.

I must say something else about John Wayne: The Life and Legend – Scott Eyman knows his movies and writes about them passionately. He’s a Pauline Kael type movie reviewer and I’d love to get his opinions regarding every picture in theaters right now.

John Wayne: The Life and Legend will be discussed for years to come. It is perhaps my favorite biography ever, and I’ve read them all. And, while the book is a huge bestseller (Eyman told me it’s in its tenth printing) you still need to immediately get your copy. And what a Father’s Day gift!

Oh, and here’s a bonus – my favorite rare John Wayne movie? Trouble Along the Way from 1953. You’ll thank me later.

The Latest Classics on Disc

Just blink a second and our friends at Olive Films will be releasing important, and in some cases lost, Blu-rays of films you have either heard about your whole life yet hadn’t ever seen or all time favorites that haven’t played TV screens in years. First up is a dandy UFO/cold war/chase thriller called The Bamboo Saucer, (1968) which will, sadly, go down in history as the last film that ever starred the great Dan Duryea. A curio for sure, but very watchable.

Two film noirs are also included in Olive’s new slate – including Cry Danger, with Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming and the late great William Conrad and director Douglas Sirk’s entry into the genre, Sleep My Love, with Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and Robert Cummings. Danger was recently restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by the Film Noir Foundation.

Also from Olive is the Blu-ray release of Frank Sinatra and Doris Day in Young at Heart; Bang Bang You’re Dead, a spy spoof from 1966 with Tony Randall (Oklahoma born!), Terry-Thomas and Wilfred Hyde White; Sidney Lumet’s powerful The Pawnbroker, starring an Oscar nominated Rod Steiger; a third volume in the Betty Boop Essential Collection; Anthony Mann’s Men in War, with Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray and a lost treasure from director Joseph Losey called Stranger on the Prowl, released, in 1952, with Losey using a pseudonym because of the then Hollywood black list. Go to olivefilms.com

From Synapse Films and Impulse Pictures comes a stunning blu ray release of Hammer Films’ Countess Dracula, starring horror babe Ingrid Pitt, made in 1971. Based on the true tale of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bothory, this movie was made in the later years of Hammer horror, the picture has been considered lost. Also from Impulse are drive in skin flicks The Chambermaid and Honeybuns. All titles available at synapse-films.com.

Oh boy, here they come again – the guys at Twilight Time are such joys to know – their knowledge of the industry and classic films is unending and their gifts to the world of film are gargantuan.

This month we start with the Blu-ray of Fate is the Hunter, a highly suspenseful and fulfilling plane crash drama from 1964 starring Glenn Ford, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette and Nancy Kwan. Also included in this fabulous package is To Whom it May Concern: Ka Shen’s Journey, a poetic feature documentary, directed by Twilight Time founder, the aforementioned Brian Jameson.

Also from Twilight Time is Two Rode Together, a terrific 1961 John Ford western with James Stewart and Richard Widmark; The Firm, a 2009 British picture from writer/director Nick Love and Rollerball, the sci-fi classic directed by Norman Jewison from 1975 and starring James Caan. Rollerball in particular is a keeper. To be honest, I wasn’t thrilled about it when the film was released to much fanfare in the day. As I have matured so has this picture. Man is it good.

Also out from Twilight Time is the Blu-ray debut of Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbirds 6 – the cinematic evolution of the hugely popular British TV series – a mix of puppetry, sci-fi futurism, action adventure and Sixties-era designs. My guess is that the 3,000 allotment of this title will be gone pronto! Order all Twilight Time titles through screenarchivesentertainment.com.

Holy cow… our friends at the Shout! Factory have very lovingly released the entire series of The Bob Newhart Show, which ran on Saturday nights on CBS throughout the 70s along with, of course, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Carol Burnett. This is a 19 disc set with every episode of the series, which also starred Suzanne Pleshette (we’ve called her number already tonight) , Peter Bonerz, Jack Reilly and Bill Daily. Father’s Day? You bet!

Also from Shout! Is Wener Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, starring, of course, Klaus Kinski and Bruno Ganz. This was rushed through theaters in 1979, but I loved it then and love the new Blu-ray now. The commentary by Herzog will be worth the price of the disc. Visit shoutfactory.com

Jim Wynorski is a B movie legend and MVD entertainment is releasing two of his wonderful, offbeat pictures – The Lost Empire, a classic 80s sci-fi romp and Gila sort of a drive in version of Godzilla. Go to musicvideodistributors.com

From Star Vista comes the third season of China Beach, one of the most important television events of the 90s. Along with star Dana Delany this season features Vince Vaughan, Tom Sizemore and Thomas Hayden Church, among others. Visit timelife.com

Oh, and from Warner Archive – westerns galore! There’s the fifth and final season of Maverick from the late 50s, then there’s a post Rockford Files 1980s version, which starred Oklahoma superstar James Garner then there’s Volume 8 in the company’s Monogram Westerns Collection.

About a year ago, I wrote about the first movie set I ever experienced – in San Antonio as they filmed Viva Max. Now that particular film has finally made it to DVD from Cheezy Flicks. We’re not talking about a Twilight Time type restoration here – the picture is fuzzy like an old VHS. But this movie means a lot to me because of the time and should matter to you because it stars Peter Ustinov (certainly underappreciated now, even though he’s a two time Oscar winner) John Astin and comedy legend Jonathan Winters. Go to cheezyflicks.com

Odd & Ends

A few more bits of housekeeping – Oklahoma City’s Dead Center Film Festival, one of the hottest in the country, will be held in downtown OKC June 12-15. Go to deadcenterfilm.org for this year’s lineup, which is, I can tell you, stellar.

In little old Tulsa, Oklahoma, a miracle is happening. The Cherokee Tribe of Oklahoma, not too long ago, aligned their casino with the “Hard Rock” brand and built one of the best showrooms in the country. Seriously. And, while the facility is state of the art, Danny Finnerty, a man among boys, knows how to please every conceivable audience by booking acts unheard of in the Tulsa market even five years ago – this past month he brought in Paul Anka (playing his first show in the Sooner State since he toured with Buddy Holly!), Martin Short, Frank Sinatra Jr., Frank Caliendo and the arch angel herself, Dolly Parton, making her Oklahoma casino debut. Make a plan to stay a weekend and see a show. Go to hardrockcasinotulsa.com for more information.

Even with all the plaudits and platitudes, not enough was written upon the passing of Mickey Rooney. I don’t know, actually, if there could ever be enough.

Lord Laurence Olivier once called Mickey Rooney “the greatest actor of them all,” and Marlon Brando said he was “the best actor in films.” [Read on here…]

Even if Mickey Rooney had no talent at all, was just a mugger, he should be lauded for earning a living in show business for over 90 years. Yet, he never received one of those AFI Achievement Awards nor was he selected for a Kennedy Center Honor. Unreal.

Hollywood knew what it had – the Motion Picture Academy gave him two Honorary Oscars. Think of the musicals, like Babes in Arms, or the dramas like Boys Town or the character parts like The Black Stallion. How about A Midsummer Night’s Dream or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World or Bill or Andy Hardy? He was supposed to be Archie Bunker, but he wasn’t crazy about the content. He was a proud United States veteran, winning a Bronze Star.

I fell in love with Mickey when I first saw Sugar Babies on Broadway in 1980. I remember my brother saying “I want a Mickey Rooney for Christmas!” If you missed him doing his baggy pants comic routines, you had your chance – he did it, along with legend in her own right Ann Miller, for 1,208 performances in New York and then toured with it for five years. What a pro.

Which brings me to my friend, Oscar winning producer Gray Frederickson, who has worked with “A” list talent his entire career. He doesn’t talk about actors much – someone else did casting. His stories about Brando, DeNiro, Eastwood and Pacino are minimal.

But he loved working with Mickey Rooney.

Gray was producing a television movie that was actually The Return of Mike Hammer, which brought Stacy Keach (who was robbed this year for his turn in Nebraska), in 1986, back to his iconic Mickey Spillane inspired television role.

Guest star Rooney was playing an intrepid reporter and was given a significant amount of business to perform during a take.

“Mickey was supposed to be walking out to his car, stopping to pick up a paper, then light a cigarette and some other activities and there were several takes,” Gray said. “Never in my life have I seen a more professional actor – he hit his mark every time and never missed a beat – all the time with a smile on his face.”

Gray said Rooney’s behavior on set was delightful as well.

“He acted like a regular journeyman actor, in fact, at one time he mentioned that he had been in the business for a long time and had been a leading man at MGM. We reassured him that we knew exactly who he was and were thrilled to have him on the picture. He seemed surprised that people remembered him.”

But George Lucas has an AFI Life Achievement Award. Go figure.

At this writing, we’re trying to work out an interview with Scott Eyman, whose new book John Wayne: The Life and the Legend reveals a side of The Duke about which even his most ardent fans are possibly unaware. It is a stunning achievement – just think, this is really the first book to tell Wayne’s life story and boy is it is revelatory. My favorite tidbits regard the respect our hero had for those who toiled in the movie industry – specifically the deep affection he had for Oliver Hardy – remember the rotund comic is in The Fighting Kentuckian – and the story of how he got the part is, ok, I’m saying it, heart warming.

It was novelist and screenwriter William Goldman who had the most succinct quote regarding Hollywood ever created – maybe you’ve heard it – “Nobody knows anything.”

Keep that statement in mind as I tell this story, again from Gray Frederickson’s memory bank,

One time Gray was either at Paramount or Lorimar or Albert S. Ruddy productions when a writer/producer came in, breathless with a new idea about a movie.

“Hey guys,” he said. “I have a great idea for a movie – I was watching the Biography channel last night and they did a feature on this newspaperman from the early days – I think his name was William Rudolph Hearst!”

Home Video

Add The Criterion Collection among those for which I say prayers every night. Seriously, what would we movie junkies do without them? Among their newest releases is a real rarity – Riot in Cellblock an independent, tougher than tough “B” picture which tackled, in 1954, the deplorable conditions in America’s prisons. (Producer Walter Wanger was just out of the pokie himself – for more info on this sordid Hollywood tale, Google Joan Bennett and Jennings Lang when you get a sec.)

Filmed in San Quentin by tougher than tough guy Don Siegel, Riot is given the complete Criterion package, with tons of extras and a beautiful restoration.

Among the “stars” of this tight little gem is legendary, to my friends and me, actor Alvy Moore. Recognize the name? Maybe you’ll remember this – he served six seasons as Hank Kimball on the greatest sitcom of all time, Green Acres.

One time a friend of mine and I, way back in the day, found out Mr. Moore was playing in an Oklahoma golf tournament. We hauled ass to Guthrie, waited around forever in the hot sun and were fabulously rewarded when out he walked. I think there were much bigger stars there, but not to us. He was, I remember, engaging and very proud of what he had accomplished on television. And I have a signed “Mr. Kimball” score card.

Here’s another “Bud ADD Moment” – nothing at all to do with Riot in Cellblock 11 – remember, on Green Acres the character “Eb” – of course you do. Well, Tom Lester, who played the loopy farmhand, actually taught at my small Oklahoma high school in the early 60s. Just a couple of years ago, I had the bright idea to feature him on the cover of Distinctly Oklahoma, of which I was managing editor. I tracked down his agent, I don’t remember how, and begged her for almost a year to interview and photograph Tom Lester. I think he lives in Georgia now. I wonder if he thought he was fodder for fun or something, because it never happened. If you’re reading Tom, my interview would be the most sycophantic in which you ever engaged. Can you imagine being on that set? With all those looney tunes? All that dope? With Arnold the pig?

Twilight Time

Oh but these mad scientists at Twilight Time are at it again and my goodness – their new releases include a modern day noir classic, a British gem and 60s and 80s American comedy at its best

Are we losing David Lynch? I met him once and he was a centered, smart human being, just like he appears everywhere. It was at a screening for Inland Empire which was, to date, his last feature. Wild at Heart is a masterpiece, based to the punctuation on the Sailor and Lula book by noir master Barry Gifford, it’s Lynch’s most commercial film and one savors every scene. Nicholas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Defoe (as, truly, Bobby Peru) and Harry Dean Stanton, Freddie Jones (who I recently discovered was Toby’s father!) and, of course Jack Nance.

Twilight Time’s restoration of this film is sublime and I’m sure it will sell out of its limited release of 3,000 units. Let’s make that happen, ok?

Used Cars is, ok, I’m gonna say this, a gas. Executive produced by Steven Spielberg and John Milius (anyone seen the terrific documentary about him?) the movie was described by Pauline Kael (anyone read the book about her?) as “A classic screwball fantasy – a shaggy celebration of American ingenuity.”

Side note, my friend Gray Frederickson (boy is he all over this one today) is in the movie – he and Spielberg, buddies now and forever, flew to the set and had a walk on bit. But here’s the deal – Gray doesn’t remember if he made the final cut or not. Are you kidding? Most people I know would have their magnifying glass taped to the TV.

Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation features the kinder, gentler Jimmy Stewart, not the lunatic Jimmy Stewart from Vertigo or the authoritarian Jimmy Stewart from Anatomy of a Murder. He mugs here with the best of them. Perhaps the best thing about this film, although it’s very watchable, is a pitch perfect score by the late, great Henry Mancini.

Now Rita, Sue and Bob Too is a 1987 British sex comedy made around the time of Stephen Frears groundbreaking British films The Hit, My Beautiful Laundrette and Prick Up Your Ears. This is actually the find in the new Twilight Time releases and a must own.

Like Twilight Time on Facebook or visit screenarchives.com

Warner Archive grinds them out every week, to the joy of film enthusiasts all over. Recently they have released some nifty titles such as the George Raft noir Race Street and the 1980s Johnny Quest animated series and 1950s Eleanor Powell camp classic Caged.

But the real reason for joy here is the Blu-ray release of Performance, which continues to be one of the weirdest movies ever made – unless you’ve seen the recent theatrical release Noah. Talk about weird.

This British film stars Mick Jagger and James Fox in a rock and roll gangster we’re trapped in a house with naked young girls movie that the family could watch over and over, kinda like The Sound of Music. It is co-directed by the great Nicolas Roeg (who I got to meet when his wife Theresa Russell shot a movie in Guthrie, Oklahoma) and Donald Cammel, who was so upset with the movie business that he killed himself in the mid 90s. warnerarchive.com.

StarVista Entertainment has recently released The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Crack Ups, personally selected by the woman herself. Was there ever anything funnier than when Tim Conway and Harvey Korman would yuck each other up? This one is a keeper.

Among the films recently released by IFC, is one of the best movies of last year Bastards a modern day crime film called a “punch drunk nightmare” by Time Out New York. I’ll spare you the plot because I hate giving it away. Just get a copy. Also recently released by IFC is the Michael Winterbottom (I once got yelled at for calling him a porn director, which he is) called Everyday as well as a great raunchy French comedy called Wrong Cops and the Hitchcock like thriller Trap for Cinderella starring a true up and comer Tuppence Middleton. She’s gonna be a star.

I love when TCM creates its own product and now they have released a new original DVD TCM Originals: Conversations with Robert Osborne.

Included are two examples of Osborne’s wonderfully produced Private Screenings – including interviews with Liza (with a “Z”) and an interview of Osborne himself by Alec Baldwin. There are also three videos under the heading of Live From the TCM Film Festival including interviews with Luise Rainer, and well all know who she is, right, and Kim Novak and Eva Marie Saint.

Chief photographer for all things Turner is a good old Oklahoma City boy named Mark Hill. I’ll tell you stories about him some day.

And finally the Shout! Factory has finally made Sophie’s Choice for us, in glorious Blu-ray. While this movie is now over 30 years old, it is as stunning and compelling as it was in 1981 when young Meryl Streep won her first Best Actress Oscar in the title role. It was also the film debut of Kevin Kline. On the polar opposite from Shout! is The Mr. Magoo Theatrical Collection, all 53 animated theatricals including 12 cartoons in widescreen for the first time! These are the cartoons we all saw on TV as kids and they’re priceless.

As are you, dear reader.

Now I do have to close with a bit of a personal story – but there’s a movie involved so keep with me. Several years ago someone gave me as a Christmas gift a certificate that pronounced that I was hereby known as a “Priest of Dudeism” after Jeff Bridges in the Coen Brother’s film The Big Lebowski. And then right around that same Christmas, and there may have been some fermentation abounding, I told some friends of mine that I could legally marry them, should the time ever come.

Well I was called by my dear friend David Beerley actually on April Fool’s Day to say that the future Mrs. Beerley, then Lisa Miller, wanted to get married on 4-4-14 at 4:00 and would I perform the ceremony? I seriously didn’t know what he was talking about until he reminded me. I then had to tell him then it was the vodka or tequila or rum or whatever talking and I really couldn’t do it - then, as couples had already had the idea of the 4-4 etc and the judges were booked, I was coerced into going to the Oklahoma County Courthouse, where I was given unlimited help by our wonderful county commissioner and head of the Wanda Jackson fan club (another Oklahoma native!) Brian Maughan, and I walked out of that austere building as an officially sanctioned “Priest of Dudeism” by the County of Oklahoma, where I can, as long as I breathe, officially preside over weddings all throughout the Sooner State. For real.

Here’s a pic and a shout out to two stars in my life, who flattered me without end by asking me to be part of their special day.

I can probably state as fact that many of you reading this are not familiar at all with the general manager of your local cable company – I guess most are bean counters, flesh pressers and empty suits. Oklahoma City, from whence I hail, has been very fortunate with Cox Communications – their company is very community driven and its management staff very public and outgoing. [Read on here…]

Here’s a great story about the former head of Cox in Oklahoma City, Dave Bialis. We don’t see Dave very much anymore as he is continually promoted, but in 2001, he was all over the place here, serving on this board and that and, as he was a graduate of the USC film school, I asked him to take a seat on our state film commission. As part of his community outreach, Dave hosted a cable access program called Generally Speaking, where he interviewed people from all walks of life. It was also, around this time, that he decided, for strictly business reasons, to drop the Sundance Channel from his cable lineup. This is where the story begins.

So I wasn’t in Dave’s office when the secretary or whoever came dashing in, a for sure look of astonishment on his or her face when he or she told him that indeed, and I’m sure he or she double checked, Robert Redford himself was on the phone with a personal plea to keep the channel alive and kicking in Oklahoma’s capital city.

According to news reports at the time Bialis said he told Redford “this is no different than any business decision that any business goes through... where you have to make calls as to what to include and what not to include.”

That’s what Dave said he said. I know a little more.

Here’s sort of what Dave really imparted.

“OK, Sundance, OK Jeremiah, OK Brubaker, how about this? We’ll think about keeping your channel on our system, because I know that you know that if one major cable system drops it there might be a domino effect across the country. Hey about this? I want you to come to Oklahoma City to appear at a charity event of my choosing and, while you’re at it, be a guest on my little nickel and dime show, then, I’m sure we can all get what we want, can’t we?”

Next thing I know, we’re planning a party for Mr. River Runs Through It, Mr. Ordinary People, Mr. Up Close and Personal.

I don’t remember at that time what part my friend Gray Frederickson played in these particular shenanigans – he had, at that time, just moved back to Oklahoma City after being in Hollywood for four decades and winning a “Best Picture” Academy Award for producing The Godfather, Part II, but I’m sure he was consulted at some point and he I and went together. Gray has a strong connection with Redford, having produced the then relatively unknown actor in a pre Butch Cassidy movie called Little Fauss and Big Halsey, in 1968. Redford also had another connection in OKC, my friend Dale Robertson, who had given him an early role in his series Tales of Wells Fargo didn’t attend – he was a little old for such things, plus he called the superstar an “expletive expletive Communist.”

The rest of the story is rather anti-climactic, after having a week to put the event together; there was Bob Woodward, Johnny Hooker and Waldo Pepper himself, just as glorious and magnificent as one would think. He gave all the gawkers a friendly smile and handshake, doing a Q&A after a remarkable speech regarding artistic expression and left us all in a swoon. Gray and I got a private audience and I mentioned that I was particularly fond of Quiz Show, a movie that now seems somewhat forgotten. He then told me that was his favorite film he’d done.

I made notes of the evening and two aspects of Redford’s speech stand out.

On the importance of keeping his Sundance Channel on the air in places such as Oklahoma City, Redford said: “The audiences at large are being starved. They’re not getting a menu that’s going to satisfy them.

“And as the major film business moves more and more toward young people and special-effects, action-blockbuster films – which is fine – it’s going to be at the expense of films that adults would really enjoy seeing. More experimental films, more diverse films, which is where independent film comes in.”

Wow.

And this regarding the film program Gray and I were starting in OKC.

“That’s a demonstration of what I think the future is going to be in terms of support for the arts,” he said. “Because obviously, the sad thing, there is no support for the arts on a government level. I think that’s sad, but it’s a fact, and so where is the support going to come from? It’s going to come from the bottom up, from the grass roots. So, for me, I think education playing a little larger role and interacting with the community, interacting to develop and sustain creative filmmaking. I think it’s important, and this program is a great example of that.”

Movie Books

For many like me, raised during a time of, gasp, no cable television, movies, which were infrequently run and poorly edited over the broadcast networks, were discovered by actually reading about them. Today those selfsame books are relegated to a single Barnes and Noble section and seem, to all but us few and proud, somewhat, well, antiquated. Oklahoma CityCommunity College houses the “Bud Elder Film Book Collection” in its library after I donated several hundred tomes but, to be honest, none of our film students really give a hoot about reading them, and it makes sense. Maybe. These books were published before DVDs and Blu-rays. Why pick up a dusty old frame by frame paperback of “Psycho” when you can watch the film on a big screen TV?

I’ve said this many times over the years – I think my love for movies was cemented by reading, re-reading and re-reading again Leonard Maltin’s “Movie Comedy Teams.” At the time I bought the book, I barely knew Laurel and Hardy and had never seen either the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, but they came alive to me between those pages. I have personally told Maltin that his passion for those funny people has spilled over through generations – I teach film comedy classes with, I hope, the same zeal.

I still love great movie books and there are several out now that bear mentioning.

“Edgar Ulmer: “A Filmmaker at the Margins,” is, shock, the first real American biography of the legendary “B” movie director. Its author, Noah Isenberg, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting, has spent years undertaking this labor of love and recently programmed a series of Ulmer’s work for the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

What gets me about Ulmer is that he was never satisfied with his status and longed for major studio success. I would have assumed that one who made the seminal “B” noir of its time, Detour, would have earned tons of accolades and thus walk out of any studio meeting with a deal. The book also spends a great deal of time on the final creative years of the artist – his move to the European community in a search for redemptive success and a regular paycheck and hopes for recognition back in Hollywood.

“The Crime Films of Anthony Mann” by Max Alvarez is also a must read. Known primarily for westerns, especially those made with Jimmy Stewart, Mann started his career with some of the greatest noirs of the period, including T-Men, Raw Deal and Side Street.

“The Crime Films of Anthony Mann” features analysis of rare documents, screenplays, story treatments, and studio memoranda and reveals detailed behind-the-scenes information on preproduction and production on the Mann thrillers. Author Max Alvarez uses rare and newly available sources to explore the creation of these noir masterworks. Along the way, the book exposes secrets and solves mysteries surrounding the mercurial director and his remarkable career, which also included Broadway and early live television.

I might also mention my friends at the McFarland Press, which has so many titles it would be hard to list even a fraction. There are several film noir books from here as well as film bios (my favorite celebrates tough guy character actor Charles McGraw) and books of reference (television characters, movie road shows and television specials being but a few of the subjects covered.) Go to www.mcfarlandpub.com.

I have to conclude this segment with a tip of the cap to a longtime friend and fellow Oklahoman, Gary Don Rhodes, who has made it his business to write some wonderful books about film, while also creating some of the best documentaries made on both horror movies and western swing music. Gary made a wonderful documentary called Banned in Oklahoma that recounted a true nightmare story of the film The Tin Drum being confiscated all over Oklahoma City. It is attached to the Criterion version of that particular German film. Go to Gary’s author page on Amazon and order away.

Home Video

Before I speak of the recent releases from the Twilight Time Home Video, allow me to speak about a film of theirs I watched recently. If there is one picture that I think defines what Twilight Time is all about, it is, to me The Blue Max, which was one of their offerings this past month.

I had never seen the darn thing, although I remember it was all over my seven year old world in 1966, with billboards and TV ads. I remember lots of my friends going to see it, but I never did. Then, to be honest, I don’t remember any VHS or DVD releases, although there might have been some, but that’s not the point. Twilight Time has restored this grand, majestic picture to a level that it never achieved in first run theaters – its colors, its sets and its passion jumped right through the screen at me. This is big time movie making (actually Film Comment magazine had me stoked for the movie after a long, thoughtful piece on the career of director John Guillermin) and this Blu-ray now breathes a life of its own. Now, if they only could have edited out George Peppard! Remember there are only 3,000 of these made, so order your copy right now. What a great Father’s Day gift!

A highlight of Twilight Time’s recent Blu-ray batch is a picture I saw at the Purcell, Oklahoma drive in and loved then, loved now. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, starred Clint Eastwood, in between Magnum Force and The Eiger Sanction and is, I think, the only film he ever did for United Artists. It was directed by a pre-The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate Michael Cimino and nabbed co-star Jeff Bridges his first Oscar nomination. Oh, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot has my pal Gary Busey in it too. It’s an offbeat and fun heist comedy and another real find from Twilight Time.

TT’s new releases also include Martin Ritt’s The Front, starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel; Woody Allen’s Crime and Misdemeanors, which stars Allen, along with Martin Landau and Anjelica Huston and a real curio, which, again, I’ve never seen on TV, The Eddy Duchin Story, a marvelous musical bio pic of the famed dance band leader starring Tyrone Power, at the peak of his Tyrone Powersness and 2014 Oscar presenter Kim Novak.

VCI is an Oklahoma company owned and operated by two friends of mine, the Blair Brothers, Bob and Don, and is the largest independent home video company in America. Check out their offerings at www.vcientertainment.com. We’re going to tell their complete story in a future column. It’s a doozy.

Warner Archive this month is also offering some gems, including the original Show Boat, featuring Irene Dunne and Jack Jones’ father Allan, he of both A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races (Thanks again Leonard Maltin). This film is just elegant and was directed by the great James Whale, who Ian McKellen played so wonderfully in Gods and Monsters. It was my brother who had the ultimate description of how to approach Show Boat, just forget the plot, close your eyes and listen to that wonderful Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein score.

Also from WA are a bunch of film noirs – the first, Mystery in Mexico, was directed by Robert Wise, both Red Light and Nocturne star real life tough guy George Raft and Roadblock, is headlined by the aforementioned Charles McGraw.

Finally, I must bring up the Bill Elliott Mystery Box Set, available, again, from Warner Archive. Superstar cowboy actor “Wild Bill” Elliott saw the writing on the wall for westerns, and appeared in a series of five then modern day mysteries for Allied Artists as Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detective Andy Doyle. All are dynamite little “B” pictures and such actors as Tom Drake, Jack Kruschen, Lyle Talbot, Beverly Garland and, are you kidding me, the late, great Timothy Carey make appearances.

What follows is a completely thought through and double checked top ten list for the year 2013 and, and, like those who write for Film Comment magazine, I usually don’t create this puppy until I have seen just about every movie which might, in fact, be good.

American Hustle a sort of 40s screwball comedy combined with elements of The Sting and all thrown together for unimpeded joy. Watch for legendary character actor Anthony Zerbe in a cameo.

Speaking for movies from the 40s The Place Beyond the Pines is a classic take on that era’s film noir pictures and, eventually turns out to be a thoughtful mediation about fathers and sons.

The Spectacular Now, based on native Oklahoman Tim Tharp’s prize winning novel is a serious high school love story that is wonderfully engaging. Shaliene Woodley is the real thing.

Mud is the indie film of the year. Part coming of age, part character study and part adventure. You will be captivated. How about the great Joe Don Baker back on the silver screen, as well as native Oklahoman Paul Sparks, he of Boardwalk Empire?

Martin Scorsese brings us three hours plus of American excess in The Wolf of Wall Street as the director of our age continues his long quest to introduce to audiences the underside of the American Dream. In my mind Leonardo Di Caprio should receive the Oscar for his by far most daring performance.

Prisoners is a raw and powerful suspense film that will be remembered for many years hence. It never lets up in its 150 minutes. Not for the faint of heart

I became aware of Jayne Mansfield’s Car during its scriptwriting and consider it the great lost film of 2013. Any picture which gives legendary character actor Robert Duvall a lead these days deserves a brass band, but Billy Bob Thornton’s first film as a director in many years is a solid cultural character study that is a true sleeper. Find it and watch today.

Robert Redford had a banner year with both All is Lost and The Company You Keep – the first a classic man vs. nature picture with Redford imperiled at sea and Company is an all star (how great is it to see Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon in the same film?) conspiracy thriller that takes us back to Three Days of the Condor.

Blue Jasmine offers Woody Allen channeling Tennessee Williams and the result is sublime. It’s a shame Alec Baldwin won’t get the credit he deserves, but Cate Blanchett, shows us what luminous acting is all about – she will completely deserve the Oscar she will win.

The Counselor is the most reviled movie of the year and I loved every moment. Those of us who, you know, read a book now and then recognize the fine work of legendary author/screenwriter Cormac McCarthy.

I also really liked Fruitvale Station, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Blue is the Warmest Color, 12 Years a Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, Oldboy, Pain and Gain, The Sapphires and Side Effects.

I saw so many terrible movies this year that the turkey list was actually tougher to pick – I left out Jack the Giant Killer and G.I. Joe and Burt Wonderstone and those were just the ones I saw! Here, though, is the bottom of the heap:

August Osage County should have been a slam dunk – it is based on perhaps the greatest stage play of the modern era, written by Oklahoman Tracy Letts, and its cast is loaded with soaring talent. Why, then, does the film resemble a poorly directed episode of the Meth Head Waltons? Just awful.

Man of Steel takes the Superman legend and rubs it in bleak colors and incoherent story lines. My favorite part? When Kevin Costner gets blown away by the tornado.

Oz the Great and Powerful makes no sense from the first scene, and goes downhill from there.

Dallas Buyers Club – I don’t at all understand the love some have for this movie, with its cheap drama and histrionic acting. I was in Dallas during this time period with a best friend dying of AIDS. There is not a true moment in the whole picture.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler is beyond silly and a modern camp classic. Oprah at the ironing board? An embarrassment.

As for the Oscars, I would have thought 12 Years a Slave a walk for Best Picture and Actor but it just doesn’t seem to have the love. One potential storyline is, however, should this historic and brutal film win the best picture, Brad Pitt, as its producer, will finally get his own Oscar. I think the real contender for Best Picture would be American Hustle, but will the Academy give two true life films set in the 70s back to back Oscars? I can make cases for every nominated film, sans The Dallas Buyers Club (see above).

From the moment I saw Blue Jasmine this past summer, I knew Cate Blanchett was a lock for the Best Actress Oscar. I’m just not sure about the other categories. Dallas Buyers Club has been winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor – I just don’t know, however, if that will play for the Oscars. I am afraid voters are taking Leo’s performance in Wolf of Wall Street for granted – it is a major step in a different direction for Di Caprio. I wouldn’t mind for Bruce Dern to win – that’s acting folks, he isn’t really a confused old man.

I also can see Jennifer Lawrence win again, and she should. Oscar voters were not afraid to give Christoph Waltz two Academy Awards in close succession. 12 Years a Slave might win for supporting actress too.

What are your favs this year? What got overlooked?

NEW ON DISC

I just saw the complete list of Twilight Time films for most of the rest of the year. Wait until you do at screenarchives.com (Frankenheimer’s The Train!?! a not distant and much better film than current cousin The Monuments Men) You know these fellows, right? Brian and Nick? They take movies you love that perhaps you haven’t seen in a while, clean them up put them on Blu-ray and sell only 3,000 limited editions, then they’re gone, gone gone.

This month’s class begins with Zulu, on the 50th anniversary of its London premiere. Directed by Cy Endfield and starring the great Stanley Baker and the soon to be great, at that time, Michael Caine, this film has had print after print around since the dawn of home video, but now fans and new converts will be able to see a fabulous work of art, thanks to Twilight Time. Also this month is Khartoum, another seemingly lost masterpiece, and, as it was released in 1966, the last of the large scale road show extravaganzas. As if you didn’t know, this one stars Charlton Heston (why don’t these boys grab a hold of Samuel Bronston’s 55 Days at Peking) and Laurence Olivier.

Shakespeare is also represented at Twilight Time, with visionary (some say) director Julie Taymor’s version of Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins.

While these are all marvelous films, the prize for me in this lot is Man in the Dark, the first 3-D picture ever released by a major studio. And it’s a film noir to boot, starring Academy Award winning noir icon Edmond O’Brien. The picture actually comes in a 3-D format, along with a 2-D version. Twilight Time founder Brian Jamieson told me he even had to go out to get the 3-D TV, player and glasses. Again, go toscreenarchives.com.

Warner Archive has once again dug deep into its vaults to retrieve The Jimmy Stewart Show, a totally lost sitcom that ran one season in the early 70s. I remember sort of liking it at the time, however it was nothing like Hawkins, the grand old man’s courtroom mystery series that came a year or two after his sitcom. Here’s a serious question. When watching both of these series, and his later films like Fool’s Parade, Stewart worked HARD and “phoned in” nothing. Did guys like Jimmy Stewart have to work? Stewart actually was the first Hollywood performer to be paid with film ownership rights, so I can’t imagine. Was it work ethic? Was it ego? Glenn Ford did the same thing. So did Henry Fonda. Both Jimmy Stewart series are available at warnerarchive.com.

From the Shout! Factory comes the epic concert film Festival Express on Blu-ray. The historic music show featured in a two disc package includes The Band, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends and many more. This is a true must own, in all its restored glory.

From Timeless Media comes The Red Skelton Show: The Lost Episodes, a three disc box set that includes 16 Skelton episodes, plus two bonus episodes, never before on DVD. It is amazing to me that many today don’t remember America’s favorite clown, even after his many years as a contract star for MGM then many more on television. This is a great beginner set for the uninitiated.

Studio brands don’t mean much anymore (maybe Disney?) but when I see the name of IFC on a current release, I know the film will be watchable and engaging. New from IFC is Una Noche a gritty, in your face film about a boy’s determination to escape Cuba and Devil’s Pass, a fabulous sort of “midnight movie” not unlike Blair Witch.

Most film columnists start writing their Christmas pieces around August, churning out their memories of It’s a Wonderful Life (which is a story in itself – this generation has no idea that the film was considered an oddity and a flop until Jimmy Stewart mentioned it on The Tonight Show and, as it was in the public domain and available for cheap airings, it has since been considered a “classic”) and other routine movies that just happen to tell a Christmas like story. Movies like Miracle on 34th Street and Christmas in Connecticut still hold up and there are others I’m sure that do as well, but few movies that are singularly about Christmas float my boat. I’ve seen them a million times and most are creaky. Here are my favorite Christmas movies, a list my successful and thoughtful brother calls Christmas Movies for People Who Aren’t Enamored with Christmas Movies. [Read on here…]

My favorite Christmas movie is Pocketful of Miracles, from MGM in 1961. I’m surprised that even my film-knowledgeable friends aren’t familiar with this one. It has run on TCM and it’s a treasure.

Pocketful of Miracles, like The Man Who Knew Too Much, was a late career remake, by the original director, of a 1930s hit. The Man Who Knew Too Much was Hitchcock’s 1956 remake of his same titled 1943 English film. Pocketful of Miracles was a remake of 1933’s Lady for a Day and both films were directed by, yes, Frank Capra. The It’s a Wonderful Life Frank Capra.

Based on a story from writer Damon Runyon (Guys and Dolls and many other films were based on his work) Pocketful of Miracles is the story of Apple Annie, a denizen of “Runyonland” who modestly sells apples on the street, while, in the meantime, spending all her hard earned funds to keep her beautiful daughter living in luxury. When the daughter announces her engagement to a gentleman of society and that she’s bringing her new in-laws to visit Annie’s wonderful home, the con is on with Dave the Dude, who is a gambler and regular customer of Annie’s (her apples bring him luck) spearheading Apple Annie’s transformation into a society matron. What happens next gives anyone who believes in miracles, or, yes, the power of movies, goose bumps.

While the plot of the picture is seamless, most of the charm of Pocketful for Miracles comes from its cast, a rare mix, at the time, of classic film character actors and some serious new faces who would become stars for the rest of their careers.

Glenn Ford both produced and starred in the film as Dave the Dude. Actually Capra wanted either Sinatra or Dean Martin for the role and, of course, Sinatra had a huge hit with the song from the film, however, Ford’s production company helped fund the picture so he got the part. Bette Davis played Apple Annie only after, why I don’t know, Shirley Booth and Helen Hayes turned it down.

Peter Falk was the only actor in the cast to get nominated and, looking back, he should have won. It was one of the two nominations he received, the other for Murder Inc.

If you haven’t experienced this fabulous picture, stop reading my crap and get it before, during and after the holidays.

Some of my other non-Christmas Christmas films include:

3 Godfathers – the John Ford/John Wayne version from 1948. Is this a lost film? Does TCM air? Know it is on DVD.

Comfort and Joy – a delightful comedy from underemployed screenwriter/director Bill Forsythe that entails an ice cream war in Scotland.

The Thin Man – Enough said.

The Apartment – Ditto.

The Shop Around the Corner – In my mind the REAL Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie

and…

Gremlins – Does the next generation know this subversive hoot?

Here’s another point upon which I wish to touch. What are your favorite movies that, while not necessarily reflecting the holiday, you first saw on Christmas day?

For us, there’s no question. On Christmas Day of 1973, our parents drove us 45 minutes to Oklahoma City and the grand, newly refurbished Plaza Theater. The first preview was for a movie we knew they’d never in a billion years let us see (remember when parents did that?) called Magnum Force and I can still remember being knocked out by the car crashing into to that extended log from the back of a truck, implying decapitation to the bad guy.

Then we heard, for the first time in our lives, Scott Joplin.

I don’t think, to this day, I have ever enjoyed a movie more than The Sting. Is it forgotten today? Does it hold up?

Here are some tidbits about The Sting. Redford (who features prominently in the next View from the Cheap Seats) got the script first and turned it down. Then both Nicholson and Beatty were courted before Redford took it back. Newman was cast after director George Roy Hill decided to direct, thus re-teaming the magic of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Henry Bumstead, the greatest decorator of all time and a man I got to know well (and who will be the subject of another column) did all the set work on the lot at Universal. The late great Richard Boone was the first choice for Lonnegan, the part that eventually went to Robert Shaw. And how about this – the “wife” in the picture that Kid Twist puts on his desk, was none other than classic character actress Kathleen Freeman, who I had the privilege of meeting when she enjoyed her comeback in Broadway’s The Full Monty.

Probably the most anticipated film of my life was Paramount and Disney production of Popeye, and my crew, which included my brother, my dearest friend, the late, Allen Saied and his sister, my precious Sharon Saied Razook and Tony Burkhead sailed in to the Apollo Twin theater in Midwest City, Oklahoma Christmas Day. I made them get there an hour early.

Popeye has always been my cartoon character. He is all over my house. At that time (and, of course, now), Robert Altman was everyone’s favorite filmmaker. We had just experienced A Wedding and A Perfect Couple, both hoots, when Popeye was filming. And after hearing rumors of Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin or Gilda Radner, Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall seemed perfect.

And then it opened. I have never wanted to like a movie more and, to be honest, I could have been nothing but disappointed. Then I saw it again, and again, and again. Popeye is probably the movie I have seen the most times in a theater. Then I got the VHS, then I got the DVD. Except for a weak, “we’re out of budget” ending, Popeye is a gem for the ages – the perfect combination of the cartoon’s legacy and Altman’s genius. Leonard Maltin gives it a “BOMB” rating. I don’t. It’s in my top ten of all time.

Our family, and I think the studios, tried to recapture the spirit of The Sting during the Christmas season of 1975 with a totally forgotten movie called The Black Bird, a comedy spoof/sequel of The Maltese Falcon. But it was a dud, starring George Segal as Sam Spade Jr. and even Lee Patrick and Elisha Cook reprising their Maltese Falcon roles.

NEW ON DISC

Shout! Factory has given us the gift of all gifts with the release of the entire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman TV series. Get this – there are all 325 episodes on 38 DVDs and there is not an episode without a gut busting laugh. There has been nothing like this show before or since. It was a syndicated, daily soap opera spoof that spawned the careers of Louise Lasser (in fairness she was Woody Allen’s ex wife), Mary Kay Place, Dabney Coleman and, perhaps most of all, the comic genius Martin Mull. The show was produced by Norman Lear, he of All in the Family. The box set is full of treasures, including ten episodes of Mary Hartman’s spin off show Fernwood 2 Nite, which was the first time we heard of this comedy team – Martin Mull and Fred Willard. Just the fact that Shout! Factory has made this happen is enough, but what about a complete series of Fernwood 2 Nite and its follow up series America 2 Nite? Go to shoutfactory.com and get this ordered now.

Twilight Time is back at it, producing Blu-rays so quickly that my column can’t keep up. From late November, we have restorations of The Way We Were, Jayne Eyre and Oliver! (see Bill’s review here), which is, I think, my favorite movie musical. This month we have an incredibly rare gem called Royal Flash directed by Richard Lester, starring Malcolm McDowell and adapted from the work of George MacDonald Fraser, who wrote 12 novels featuring the swashbuckling character and two Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. I talked recently to co-founder Nick Redman for a future column on Sam Peckinpah and heard about some of their upcoming releases. Like Twilight Time on Facebook or go to screenarchives.com.

Warner Archive keeps bringing the classics each week. The last batch included the two Jack Benny films that the comedian joked about the rest of his life – George Washington Slept Here and The Horn Blows at Midnight. Both are terrific.

Olive Films just knocks me out. They find orphaned films and meticulously release them on Blu-ray. Twilight’s Last Gleaming is one of the most secretly controversial films of all time – to be honest, have you seen it? Directed by the late great Robert Aldrich, the picture stars a terrific Burt Lancaster as a disgruntled military man who takes over a nuclear launch site. What happens throughout is the reason so few recognize this film as a classic. There’s also A New Leaf which is supposed to be a shadow of what the audiences of 1971 were supposed to have seen, offers Walter Matthau and Elaine May in two classic comedic performances. Also from Olive is 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s a sequel to Going My Way with, of course, Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman; Riot a wonderful 1969 prison picture directed by Buzz Kulik with Jim Brown and Gene Hackman; and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which, along with White Heat showcases Cagney at his craziest.

One more mention. A dear friend of mine, here in Oklahoma City, has overcome impossible odds to create and produce an uplifting, wonderful Christmas special. Darla Z’s Christmas ‘Round the World has, or will, enjoy over 100 airings on public television stations throughout the country. Darla called on Bob Rozario, a famous Las Vegas musician, to create arrangements and co write, along with Darla, some timeless new Christmas music. Now available on DVD, this special is an outstanding, extravagant holiday masterpiece! I know Darla well, and it is an honor to share the success of this Oklahoma treasure with all my readers here on The Digital Bits. Go to darlaz.com.

Happy Holidays from the Elders and… ok, I can say this once… Go Sooners in the Sugar Bowl!

It was the year of our Lord, 1972 and The National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City (now called the National Cowboy Museum and Western Heritage Center) hosted every year a grand event called the Western Heritage Awards, where they gave a trophy called “The Wrangler” to outstanding theatrical and television Westerns and the winner this particular year was a film called “The Cowboys,” starring, well, you know who. [Read on here...]

And the rumor mill made it all the way down I-35 to our hometown of Purcell, Oklahoma and my brother and I, about 12 and 11, suggested to our father, who was a state legislator of some note, that he use his influence to get us into that ceremony, and darned if he didn’t. And, so on a balmy April night, we got to stay in a hotel in Oklahoma City and dressed up in our fancy early 70s garb and thus intermingled with movie greatness for really the first time in our lives.

But, sadly, not the Duke.

For some reason, actually the same one Clint Eastwood must currently have, as he won’t attend, John Wayne didn’t really come to these awards, although he won for The Alamo, The Comancheros, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Sons of Katie Elder, (by the way, did you realize that the youngest Elder, so to speak, was named “Bud” and I predated the movie by six years!), The War Wagon, True Grit and The Cowboys, which was his last win. Maybe his not showing up was the reason The Shootist, one of his true classics, didn’t win in 1976. You would see him at events all over the country, but never at the Western Heritage Awards.

I know John Wayne came to Oklahoma City at least once, because my dear friend Lori Hall Copeland saw him in an elevator once when she was a kid. And I know he loved the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, as he left the museum his complete Kachina (Indian) doll collection and other memorabilia. Who knows the real reason? It still plagues people here.

But enough about that… let’s talk about who WAS there. I know as I still have the program loaded with signatures.

First there would have been Dale Robertson, who was very instrumental in the founding of the Hall of Fame, who would later become a mentor and dear friend to me. And I think I would have known who he was then, as he was on TV a lot. I would imagine that Oklahoma’s own Ben Johnson might have been there – but we had met him after he won his Oscar for The Last Picture Show in a hometown diner, so that would have been old news to such sports as us.

And then there were two of the stars of The Cowboys – Slim Pickens and Roscoe Lee Browne. We met both and they were wonderful. Imagine, at the early age, I had yet to see Dr. Strangelove. And Browne I later saw in My One and Only on Broadway.

There were TV stars there too… no Jim Arness, but Milburn Stone, Ken Curtis and Amanda Blake represented Gunsmoke. All, now I know, were great character actors in “B” pictures.

Then, inducted into the Western Player’s Hall of Fame, were two giants in the film industry – one James Stewart and, Heavens to Betsy, Joel McRae. Stewart we certainly all knew as kids – when you think about it, he really never stopped working. We had seen a great (still) movie called Fools’ Parade and the next year, we would watch him in a short lived CBS series Hawkins. I hadn’t then experienced The Philadelphia Story or Winchester ‘73 or maybe my all time favorite film Vertigo. I do remember that he wore an obvious, even to my young eyes, toupee.

McRae, we didn’t know at all and I probably wouldn’t have approached him for an autograph had my dad not told me he was one of the greats. Imagine, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, Foreign Correspondent and, of course Ride the High Country. Good Lord. And I remember him being very gentle and sweet and gray haired.

That night also featured the unveiling of a new painting for the Hall. Oh yes, it was rendered by Norman Rockwell and its subject was, how do I say this, Walter Brennan. Him, we knew, because of the Over the Hill Gang movies and reruns of The Real McCoys. He also did a series we watched called The Guns of Will Sonnett. I didn’t know he was, at the time, the only three time Oscar winner from, gulp, Rio Bravo and My Darling Clementine and The Westerner and Blood on the Moon and many others. The rule with him, which I for sure remember, was that he wouldn’t sign autographs while he was at dinner. We had to wait to go to him.

There’s another component about that night that I’ll have to share. My dear friend Bill Thrash, who we lost this summer and I didn’t know then, was in charge of the program and he, along with some cohorts, made sure that every year a Wrangler Award went to the best score in a Western film. I know now they did this so that they could meet their heroes – Dimitri Tiomkin, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Fielding, etc.

That night, sitting next to us, was a bearded, bespeckled fellow who I had just seen win an Oscar for adapting the Fiddler on the Roof score. He was there to accept his award and conduct an orchestra playing the theme music he had written for The Cowboys. My dad bugged him all through dinner, after I told him who he was, telling him that his son (me) was an outstanding piano player. This was embarrassing me at the time because somehow I knew that John Williams would go on to much bigger fame and fortune.

The Wranglers still survive, although there are few real Western stars left – the ceremony gets by with an occasional appearance by Oklahoma’s own Rex Linn (he of many TV Westerns and “CSI Miami” and a great guy). Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott still show up and now and then there’s a good Western – the remake of True Grit, Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, an overlooked Tommy Lee Jones directed feature that, along with Jones, starred my buddy Dwight Yoakam and eegads, Django Unchained, which won last year.

Somewhere the Duke is, for sure, spinning in his grave.

Remembering Ron Joy

Damn, I hate writing obits. But this one is necessary.

The first time Gray Frederickson took me to Hollywood in an attempt to attract film business into Oklahoma, he introduced me to his oldest Hollywood friend, Ron Joy. And I was immediately smitten. He was everything I thought a Hollywood player should be – always dressed to the nines, with perfectly brushed white hair and a black leather jacket and scarf. He was ribald and witty and every restaurant manager in Beverly Hills and Hollywood would make a table for him when others had reservations for a year. And he knew everybody – one time I met him for breakfast before the University of Oklahoma played WashingtonState in a rare Rose Bowl appearance on New Year’s Day, and he had spent all evening at Jack Nicholson’s house. Did I say I was smitten?

He came to Hollywood from Chicago and was, mostly, a photographer of great renown – he was the official shooter for The Beatles when they came to America. He was also best friends with Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews and the hilarious Edwards’ film The Party with Peter Sellers was based on an idea of Ron’s. He was a Rat Pack associate member and actually lived with Nancy Sinatra for many years.

Actually, Nancy was the first person to sign in on his obituary last week. He had Alzheimer’s for the past five or six years and finally succumbed, with his daughter, who he raised alone and his two grandsons at his bedside.

Two quick stories.

I brought him to Oklahoma one time to help teach a film class. And I took him to eat the local joints, which included a fried onion burger joint in El Reno and an all you can eat catfish place in Marietta. This to a man who ate brunch every Sunday at the Hollywood Roosevelt. I never lived it down.

Although I have other stories that I best not repeat, (however, all my friends know Ron’s punch line “blacksex.com” – remember I said he was ribald) here’s my favorite.

Gray, Ron and I were eating lunch at Café Roma, a longtime insiders’ outdoor Italian café in Beverly Hills. Oh, and with us, whether at a quick pass through or sharing the table were George Hamilton, Mel Blanc, Jr. and the Governator (more stories about him another time).

Out in the bright California sunshine, I noticed that dapper Ron was wearing an electric blue watch, with an electric blue leather band and, although I don’t usually notice these kinds of things, I commented on how beautiful it was.

“Nancy Sinatra gave this watch to me,” he said.

Gray snapped back.

“No she didn’t – I saw you buy it off the street last week.”

To which Ron, peering over his sunglasses, said.

“Who are you going to believe?”

God Bless Ron Joy and his family. He was wonderful to this rube from Oklahoma.

Blu-ray & DVD Classics

Straight from Olive Films, we have a treasure trove of delightful, beautifully rendered Blu-ray wonders.

First is Shack Out on 101 on of the lost, great indie noirs that played “B” picture houses in the 50s. With Lee Marvin, playing a character called “Slob” and a vicious anti commie sentiment, this film demands to be seen. Also a noir-ish classic from Olive is The Big Combo, directed by Joseph H. Lewis and starring Richard Conte.

But there’s more – after Paramount lovingly restored the Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons, many of us wondered about the sailor’s female counterpart – Betty Boop. Well, here she is in tremendous Blu-ray in two volumes. I’ve watched all of both and there isn’t a dud in the bunch. Go to olivefilms.com.

Twilight Time, this month, actually sent me a movie I’ve wanted to see since I was a kid – The Other was “R” rated at a time I couldn’t attend such films and it has always escaped me. Until now. The Blu-ray collectible edition (meaning only 3,000 were made) is a must own. Also this month from Twilight Time is Mindwarp a post apocalyptic horror gem that is rare beyond rare. But boy howdy does it look great. Go to screenarchives.com and get ‘em while you can. Oh, and I have to tease… up on Twilight Time’s horizons are two Woody Allen pictures and, dare I say it, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, one of Clint Eastwood’s goofiest, greatest movies.

Warner Archive continues to release classics upon classics – and now include titles from Paramount. Here are two that are undeservedly lost to time. Funeral in Berlin was the sequel to The Ipcress File and the prequel to Billion Dollar Brain as Caine played an intelligent, glasses wearing antithesis of James Bond named Harry Palmer, based on books by the still living, thank goodness Len Deighton. Guy Hamilton, who directed this film, also did a few Bonds you may have heard of like Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever.

Another Archive Paramount film is called Posses that was a mid 70s revisionist Western starring and directed by Kirk Douglas. It’s great fun – more so than Douglas ’ comedy Western The Villain that would appear several years later. Here’s a story on myself... I told a girl that I was dating at the time that I had written a song just for her and, knowing she would never see this picture, appropriated its theme song. I think this is the one. Go to warnerarchvie.com.

I’ve never been one to go to a movie solely based on casting because, let’s face it, actors sometimes aren’t the best judge of script or director material. The exceptions these days might be, for me, Leo DiCaprio, Nicholson or Redford or Clint or Woody Allen or, if he should ever work again, Warren Beatty. People like that. It’s sad, but so many great stars have lost goodwill with their audiences – remember when you looked forward to a Robert De Niro movie? An Al Pacino move? Those actors have to do what they have to do in order to pay their bills, but De Niro’s latest movie The Killing Season, also starring another dud as of late, John Travolta, went straight to DVD. [Read on here…]

Remember, may classic films have been made with the likes of Lawrence Tierney or his brother Scott Brady or Sterling Hayden or John Payne or Dana Andrews – mostly forgotten names now, but when put into the right part, they lit up the screen. You don’t have to be a superstar to make a film worth seeing. I know personally the struggles Billy Bob Thornton had to go through to make Sling Blade, how Forest Whittaker had to fight to get his role in The Color of Money, before Eastwood cast him in Bird or how many actresses had turned down the lead role in Shakespeare in Love.

I certainly don’t ascribe to the famous Hitchcock after quote about his thespians: “I never said all actors are cattle – what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” I think too much emphasis is placed on the star rather than the project, the writer and the director. Believe me, stars rule Hollywood.

However, don’t forget this, Francis Coppola has said privately to many of his friends “Give me and good script and good actors and there doesn’t even need to be a director!”

To make my point somewhat, let me give you some famous performances that were to have been given to someone else. Some of these you might know, some I know candidly from conversations I’ve had with producers.

Apocalypse Now, was originally, before it was taken over by Coppola, going to be a semi straight Vietnam action movie to be written and directed by John Milius, who eventually received credit for his script. Originally offered the part of Captain Willard was an actor who had recently appeared in Milius’ script of Magnum Force – Clint Eastwood. When Eastwood turned the producers down, they next went to Steve McQueen, who has actually anxious to do the part until he received the cancer diagnosis that eventually killed him. Finally, with Coppola directing, a decision was decided to hire a “brainier” actor, Harvey Keitel, who, after six months of shooting was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, just off of Badlands, who immediately had a heart attack that shut down the production for months.

Million Dollar Baby has one of the most interesting development stories in the history of Hollywood. Anjelica Huston approached producer Al Ruddy with a short story from the book “Rope Burns” by ex boxing cut man F.X. Toole. Huston was going to direct the girl’s story only for Showtime and asked Ruddy to produce. After reading the book, Ruddy came up with the idea to combine stories from book that created the Morgan Freeman character mentoring an up and coming boxer. Huston eventually moved on, so Ruddy doggedly pressed forward to get the film made – at one time he had Sandra Bullock and Paul Newman and director Robert Benton, before Benton’s film The Human Stain showed a decline in the director’s talents.

Finally Ruddy showed the script to Clint Eastwood, who took it on after his wife gave it her thumbs up. However the film was not an immediately “go” with executives at Warner Brothers, Eastwood’s home studio. It was only when Eastwood threatened to shop the script with his name attached around Hollywood that the film was green lit. It, of course, won multiple Oscars and is now considered a classic, but it took ten years from inception to finish to make.

I think I mentioned before that Robert Duvall had actually filmed scenes as William Munny in Unforgiven with Francis Coppola directing before it was shut down as part of the United Artists’ Heaven’s Gate disaster.

Does everyone know that Michael Keaton was replaced midway through the shooting of Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo and replaced by Jeff Daniels?

Here’s a few more examples of fun recasting incidents – Burt Reynolds turned down two roles that gave Jack Nicholson two of his three Oscars – One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Terms of Endearment. Nicole Kidman was to have played the lead in Panic Room before a knee injury forced her to give the role to Jodie Foster (I was actually in the car with one of the stars of that film when he was given the news) and that Gene Hackman was originally signed to star in and direct Silence of the Lambs.

For my weekly radio appearance on The Franchise radio this week, I was asked my three favorite performances in the history of movies. One would certainly have to include John Wayne in The Searchers or Bogart in In a Lonely Place or De Niro in Raging Bull or Peter O’ Toole in Lawrence of Arabia these were my three – Paul Newman in The Verdict, Peter Sellers in Being There and George C. Scott in Patton.

What are yours?

New on Home Video

We who love classic films should bow to the feet of TCM. Seriously, you never know what they are going to release next. In this instance it’s the Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics IV, which, with its diverse title component offers the rarest of the rare in classic noir.

Included in this set are Joseph H. Lewis’ So Dark the Night, Robert Rossen’s Johnny O’ Clock with Dick Powell, Walk a Crooked Mile with big time actors Dennis O’Keefe and Louis Hayward, Between Midnight and Dawn with Edmond O’Brien and Walk East on Beacon.

With all due respect to previous releases from Columbia, they are films that we know, that are shown regularly on television. This batch includes the rarest of the rare – I’ve seen Johnny O’ Clock and Between Midnight and Dawn, but a new (to me) Joseph H. Lewis movie is a must see.

It seems hard to imagine a world for us classic film fans without Twilight Time Home Video. Their last four releases have represented the highest level of film restoration – with titles such as the ultra rare The Disappearance along with perhaps the greatest British gangster picture of the modern era Sexy Beast to a wonderful 80s gem called Alamo Bay, with Ed Harris and Amy Madigan directed by Louis Malle and, perhaps Twilight Time’s greatest achievement yet – John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk. All these, especially the Ford starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert are must owns. Go to screenarchives.com to order yours before the pressing of 3,000 are sold out.

Warner Archive also has some real gems this month. Who remembers native Oklahoman James Garner’s mid 70s series Nichols that only lasted one season. The series was a cross between the Garner of Support Your Local Sheriff and Rockford Files. The series was also noted for a surprise mid way in the season. Warner Archive offers the entire season of Nichols.

Our topic today was prompted by a conversation I had after my dear friend Bill Thrash’s funeral a couple of weeks ago. His surviving sister told me that when my pal, about whom I thought I knew everything, was 16, around 1954, in the small southeastern Oklahoma town of Ada, he commandeered a shitload of dimes and tried, to the very best of his ability, to call his hero, Frank Sinatra.

I started thinking then about how many of us have attempted to be in touch with our favorite movie star, director, producer, writer, composer or author? I used to do that very thing a lot when I was single and bored.

Here are two stories that are so personal that I’ve never written about them before... [...]

John Randolph is one of the great character actors of all time – you’ve seen him, a moon faced everyman who was equally adept at both comedy and drama. He’s on my mind a lot these days because he was prominently featured in the John Frankenheimer picture Seconds, which recently received a reverential Blu-ray from Criterion as well as Serpico, Inherit the Wind and many others.

Randolph, who was a victim of the notorious Hollywood blacklist, was having career resurgence in the mid 80s – he landed the plum role of Jack Nicholson’s father in the now classic Prizzi’s Honor for director John Huston and had won a Tony award for Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound. I was planning a trip to New York to see Broadway, so I wrote Randolph and asked if I could come backstage. I attempted to grease his palm by mentioning I wanted to share a rare VHS copy of what was known to be his favorite film role in Joseph Mankiewicz’s offbeat western There Was a Crooked Man.

Well, I didn’t need the bait – Randolph immediately wrote back that he would like for us to come to a Wednesday matinee of the show and to have dinner with him before the evening performance. What a delightful human being, soft spoken and very intelligent – turns out our politics were of the same sort and our dislike of the then current president was mutual. He talked at length about the blacklist, his favorite directors, especially Frankenheimer and Huston; about his wife, who very unfortunately died as they were attending the 1985 Oscars and his deep understanding and love for his particular profession.

We stayed in touch until he died. Get Criterion’s new Blu of Seconds and watch a master performer at his peak.

Mrs. Lucille Hardy Price

Here’s a story practically no one knows. It’s too personal.

Laurel and Hardy own my heart. Even at a small age, I knew they were more than funny men. They are American – they try their best at everything, there isn’t a mean bone in their communal bodies and they are two men who cannot do without each other. I collect foreign language posters of their films and I think, sans Louis Armstrong and the American Songbook, they are our greatest cultural export to the world.

In the early 80s, Time wrote a story about residuals and lack thereof and used as their subject Lucille Hardy Price, widow of Babe Hardy. She, and other family members of actors pre mid 60s, received virtually no funds for use of the artists’ images or likenesses. I had what I found out later was a public domain VHS tape of the This is Your Life featuring Stan and Ollie and I looked up Mrs. Price’s address in Los Angeles and sent a letter asking if I could give it to her.

What she sent back to me means more to me than just about anything I own – a several page long handwritten letter saying that she would treasure the tape – she didn’t have it – and recounted in great detail her love for her husband and the love that he and Stan shared as friends for over 30 years. The letter should be in a museum. She also sent a photo that both had signed before they died and some other personal treasures as well. Thinking about it today makes me very emotional.

My guess is that people who read this have had similar experiences. I would love to hear about them.

On Video

Jack Benny is, regrettably, unknown from today’s generation of young performers – oh they’ll mention Jonathon or Rickles, but Benny, certainly one of the leading entertainers of the 20th Century, seems to have been forgotten. While watching The Shout! Factory’s The Jack Benny Program: The Lost Episodes I was again stunned at this comic master’s act – it’s so funny and sophisticated that I can’t believe these programs were so continuously popular. Among the guests in this collection in this fabulous box set are Benny’s best friend George Burns, Gary Cooper, John Wayne and, kid you not, Harry Truman. This box is a treasure. Own it.

Also from The Shout! Factory are The Best of Friday, fabulous TV from the early 80s, which featured such stars as Andy Kaufman, Larry David and Billy Crystal; Swamp Thing, an absolute cult classic starring Andrienne Barbeau and Louis Jourdan and directed by Wes Craven; and Alan Rudolph’s oddball musical odyssey Roadie, a personal favorite, starring Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Jr. and more. Remember the great song, “That Lovin You Feelin,” by Orbison and Emmylou Harris? It’s from this movie. Also released on Blu-ray is perhaps the first cult film of my generation, A Boy and His Dog.

Twilight Time’s Blu-rays this month continue the company’s appreciation of the great Walter Hill – his latest theatrical offering Bullet to the Head is much better than it was let on to be – by releasing Hill’s classic The Driver, starring Ryan O’Neal and Bruce Dern. Add this classic modern noir with Hill’s depression classic Hard Times and you have two of the best films of the 70s. Twilight Time also has released Brian de Palma’s Body Double. Remember, when the allotment of 3,000 units of these classics are gone, they’re, well, gone.

From the Acorn Media Group this month, there’s the Blu-ray debut of the BBC miniseries called Smiley’s People, the third book and second film, in the trilogy that began with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Of course, the masterful Alec Guinness plays Smiley and I challenge anyone to start this six hour opus and not be glued to the television screen.

Warner Archive continues its work as the preeminent VOD distributor in the country with their latest releases, Andrew V. MacLaglen’s Mitchell, a post Walking Tall feature starring Joe Don Baker; Charlton Heston in The Naked Jungle and a forgotten 70s gem called The White Dawn, directed by no less than Philip Kaufman and starring the late, great Warren Oates.

The Cohen Media group has discovered and released an incredibly rare masterpiece of post war French cinema with the Blu-ray release of The Damned, a 1947 film noir directed by Rene Clement (Purple Noon). What a find is this!

Finally, those maniacs at Vinegar Syndrome do their dead level best to change the playing field of the cultural world by releasing some drive in cult treasures that are completely engaging – first is the Blu-ray Good Luck Miss Wyckoff, based on a novel by the noted author William Inge, which tackles the themes of some of Inge’s other works such as Picnic and Dark at the Top of the Stairs, while also being trashy fun. Seek this one out. Also from VS is a double feature of The Sexualist and Wendy’s Palace, which are exactly what you think they are.

I love great film reference books, lately I have been reminded of Danny Peary, whose tomes have educated film goers for decades. Now, another terrific publication follows the work of the Medved Brothers in the 70s and 80s – Phil Hall’s The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time from Bear Manor Media. This dude gets it. Included here are such theatrical curios of my time as The Last of the Secret Agents, starring the comedy team of Allen and Rossi, The Maltese Bippy, starring the comedy team of Rowan and Martin and The Fat Spy, starring the comedy team of Jack E. Leonard and Phyllis Diller. One minor quibble, however – Mystic River?!?!?!?

Theatricals

I do not have the words or imagination to say the absolutes that should follow a new Woody Allen release – it’s like what Newsweek magazine said about Sinatra when he died – “You could call him the greatest of all time, and he was, but somehow that’s just not enough.”

Were Blue Jasmine made by a hot young upstart at Sundance, the director would have a three picture deal and would be shooting the newest Iron Man installment – instead, it is written and directed by arguably the greatest artist in American film who has been giving us one of these since about 1968.

This movie is so challenging, so thought provoking and, ultimately, so devastating that one sits in the audience in stunned disbelief that it was even funded and released. Midnight in Paris was the best film of 2011. Blue Jasmine will most likely be the best film of 2013. There is a roll out release of this picture from Sony Classics so seek out and behold.

Also from Sony Classics is the latest from Pedro Almodovar (who some have compared to Woody) called I’m So Excited, a campy sex farce from a true master.

The summer will be remembered as a season of duds, After Earth was just embarrassing, White House Down was a mess and even Pacific Rim, which did display a level of wit missing from most blockbuster, sci-fi pictures, was treated poorly at the box office.

Elysium, however, is a cut above. It’s a follow up to director Neil Blomkamp’s imaginative District 9 from a couple years back, and, with strong character development, non-stop action and a few political jabs along the way, it’s the best movie of its type this summer.

Have to also mention that I just got out of a screening for Kick Ass 2 and will be interested to see how it performs – here again we have a young girl talking and fighting like a street thug, with lots of bad language and potty humor to boot. The movie is a stink bomb, but its place in the current culture is fascinating.

- Bud Elder

]]>budelder@thedigitalbits.com (Bud Elder)View from the Cheap SeatsThu, 22 Aug 2013 11:47:19 -0700On Set Visits, The Only Game in Town, Naughty DVDs and Time Wasting Origin Storieshttp://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/on-set-visits-only-game-in-town-and-more
http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/on-set-visits-only-game-in-town-and-more

The Only Game In Town

Here’s the first time I ever stumbled upon a film set – my family and my eight year old bad self had driven from Purcell, Oklahoma to San Antonio, Texas to attend the HemisFair ’68, a wing ding of a World’s Fair (do those still exist?) which featured H.R. Pufnstuf as its mascot and the Tower of the Americas as its symbol of both American and Texas ingenuity and, as I remember, a heck of a place to eat while slowly spinning above the earth.

It was hot, I remember that, but it’s always pretty brutal there, and we were downtown when it was pointed out to us a crowd of people around a group of Boy Scouts raising the flag with all kinds of gadgets and whirlybirds in the immediate vicinity. The picture, sorrowfully forgotten by just about everybody, was a comedy about a disillusioned Mexican general trying to take back the Alamo called Viva Max, which starred Peter Ustinov, Jonathan Winters, John Astin, Harry Morgan, Pamela Tiffin and others. When it came to the theaters we saw it three or four times - the first time because we felt special in that we has seen them film and the other times because it was good clean fun and because, even at an early age, I knew Jonathan Winters was a difference maker.

I mention this as I wanted to discuss how magical it is to just happen upon a movie or TV set. You big city yardbirds trip over them, I know. Even by accident when I’m on the east or west coast, there they are with their signs and their walkie-talkies and their underfed interns and their overfed security. But we in the hinterlands are lucky to see two guys with a Betamax shooting in front of the Dairy Queen. And here’s a story that’s cogent in that Twilight Time, the savior company of lost and forgotten movie gems, has recently released The Only Game in Town, a 20th Century Fox picture, the last of any movies directed by George Stevens, and starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty, a more than interesting substitute for its original male star, Frank Sinatra.

Bill and Billie Thrash are people that every reader of this site would love to pieces. Bill has, in his 70 plus years of living, never not been in the television station business (he currently is the station manager for our local public television station) and Billie is an actress of great perspicacity – she was in the Ann Miller version of Follies at the Paper Mill Playhouse that is a milestone production of that Sondheim musical.

They were celebrating an early anniversary in 1969, when Bill popped a last minute Vegas trip on Billie, throwing caution to the wind and staying at Caesar’s. From the time they landed in the wee small hours, however, as though they were extras in a Las Vegas road show of The Out of Towners, the trip went off the wheels, especially when Caesar’s didn’t have, in pre-computer days, their reservation. So there they are, our little Oklahoma City couple, sitting around praying that Caesar’s wouldn’t pawn them off on some strip dump motel, when A-Ha! they spied, is that him, Warren Beatty walking out the front door and, look over there, that can’t be George Stevens, can it? Yes, they stumbled upon the set of The Only Game in Town.

Apparently it took hours for the exhausted couple to get their room (which, eventually, was a very upgraded suite) but, at that time, they had to sit around and Billie was upset and who came over to sit by her, Mr. What’s New Pussycat himself. Warren offered kind words and a sympathetic ear and then went back to shoot the scene.

Isn’t that cool?

While most of The Only Game in Town was filmed on stage sets near Paris so Mrs. Burton could be with Mr. Burton when he filmed Staircase with Rex Harrison (Twilight Time, please?), Taylor, Beatty and company must not have been in Vegas for set ups. Oh, there was a sighting of Hollywood’s Cleopatra. She and Beatty filmed an elevator scene at Caesar’s to a delighted crowd.

Avalanche Express

Here’s the back story behind the recent Warner Archive release of the 1979 film Avalanche Express, a spy picture that starred Lee Marvin and Robert Shaw and was directed by Mark Robson, he of Von Ryan’s Express, Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls. The script was written by, of all people, Abraham Polonsky, the formerly blacklisted director of Force of Evil, known mostly for not giving us enough good movies. And Avalanche Express had the elements to be one.

My story comes from Gray Frederickson, who was then head of production at Lorimar, a television studio that had recently branched out into great filmmaking (The Big Red One and Being There) and not so hot (The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh).

Robert Shaw, straight from the shark’s tummy in Jaws, was thin and pale from the first day of shooting and died mid production. You can certainly tell if you’re looking for it – his voice was actually dubbed by Rich Little (I’d like to see a complete list of films he’s dubbed over, I know he did David Niven in the last Pink Panther).

It was in post production, however, that the final nail in the coffin of Avalanche Express was hammered. Director Robson was diagnosed with devastating cancer and was determined to finish what would certainly be his final movie and, as fate would have it, he died that week after production.

After all the funerals, when the movie was brought into the editing room, the producers were shocked to see that, in order to finish the movie while he still had the strength to do so, Robson only shot masters. There were no close ups or camera angles. It looked like a big home movie.

Here’s my favorite part – Gray hired his longtime friend and name above the title cult director Monte Hellman in to re shoot and salvage what he could of the picture. Hellman, of The Shooting, Ride the Whirlwind and Two Lane Blacktop, had the perfect credentials to make something of the footage and apparently to those who have seen the original mess, he pulled off a miracle. Find out for yourself at warnerarchive.com.

That Reminds Me

I have been somewhat intimately involved with The Lone Ranger since it was first announced, as a good friend of mine was offered and, at the time accepted the role of Butch Cavendish. I saw the movie in an early preview and knew then what we all know now – it’s a disaster, without a single redeeming feature except that, well, maybe the color was pretty. I have lots of stories that I’ll tell when wounds aren’t so fresh, but here’s a tidbit – my friend’s break even gross, when his percentage points would have been paid, was $600 million. Wow.

On Video

One of the true joys of the digital world is that we are able to experience movies that aren’t necessarily of the “first run” type and there are some genre releasing companies rescuing some fabulous films from obscurity that are but fodder for our personal DVD and Blu-ray players.

Such a company is Vinegar Syndrome, which, this month released two fabulous retro pictures that take me back to New York naughtiness that is not completely different from Oh Calcutta on stage and other “adult” films of the time. The Telephone Book and A Labor of Love are essential, especially Telephone Book, which features former Laugh In star Sarah Kennedy (a Goldie Hawn clone, at the time) along with character actors Roger C. Carmel and William Hickey to tell a psychedelic sex story in amazing black and white Blu-ray. I had never heard of this movie and consider it a major find. Go to vinegarsyndrome.com today to check out all their titles.

Wild Eye Releasing keeps ‘em coming… this month is a fascinating documentary about the controversial death of comedian Andy Kaufman. I’m one of the brave and few who actually saw Kaufman perform – this in a Tulsa, Oklahoma night club, and remember thinking then that everything was a put on. It was after his Letterman incident and he wore a neck brace the entire time, even when he was playing Tony Clifton, who, by the way, plays a major part in the DVD. Go to wildeyereleasing.com.

Shout! Factory keeps up its release of quality Blu-rays with The Producers and Kentucky Fried Movie, which I first saw, and loved, at the time, at a Norman, Oklahoma drive in theater. What I remember most was the nakedness. Also coming from Shout! – Swamp Thing in Blu-ray. They also, bless, just released a wonderful Blu-ray of The Producers, that really is a must have.

Also from Cult Epics is Private – a Blu-ray sex farce from a master of the genre Tinto Brass.

Perhaps one of the most infamous movies of all time is currently on Warner Archive – The Brotherhood, a gangster picture with Kirk Douglas being directed by Martin Ritt. Why is it so important? Because it was such a disaster in the late 60s for Paramount, that the studio vowed to go low ball with their then newest gangster script – The Godfather. Would not for the miracle of the right stars aligning, you would have been seeing a modern day Godfather with Ernest Borgnine, Ryan O’ Neal and the like. It turns out, however, that The Brotherhood is terrific fun. It’s currently available at warnerarchive.com.

On October 12, 2012, an unprecedented gathering of music stars and friends joined together to celebrate the life and music of Levon Helm at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where the likes of Joe Walsh, Bruce Hornsby, Mavis Staples, Lucinda Williams and the essential John Prine put on a fabulous performace that is captured on both blu ray, DVD and CD representations. Love for Leon: A Benefit to Save the Barn is available at outlets all over the country.

In Theaters

For discerning film goers, the summer season used to be a mixed blessing – believe it or not, there was a time when summer blockbusters were, like, good. Not so much anymore.

Of the last few $200 million plus features I’ve seen, only one, World War Z uses its budget to full effect as it adapts the Max Brooks novel (which the film resembles not at all) to create a sensitive, family film about vampire zombies. You actually leave the picture wanting more, a rare feat these days. I left Man of Steel wanting more. Vodka.

As for the rest, yuk. Man of Steel is just almost unforgivable. Seriously, at this point in the game, why do we have to spend so much of the picture learning who is Superman? Don’t we all know? My argument is that not only is Hollywood turning out unoriginal nonsense but that the movies contain unoriginal nonsense within the unoriginal nonsense. Why not let Superman be Superman and fly around and save the world in at least a new and exciting way if you’re going to make the picture at all? We don’t care anymore about Kevin Costner being eaten by a tornado. Man of Steel is glum, disinteresting, confusing and unnecessarily dark.

The Lone Ranger is its own storm. I have intimate known this project and this script for several years and time hasn’t made it any better. Just a complete, unfocused, long, disgusting mess. An embarrassment for all concerned.

It’s funny our local television station when I was growing up alternated the television versions of Superman and The Lone Ranger every other day. Now, they’re two new, horrible movies together!

Leave it to the Pixar Studios to provide some light hearted cheer for the summertime blahs – Monsters University could be called a completely unnecessary sequel – the original was so delightfully self contained - but there are laughs to be had here. So what if it’s not Wall-E or Up or even The Incredibles (recently selected by a national critics’ group as the best of all Pixar films)? Considering the options at the box office, Monsters University is, even when it seems a tad forced, a colorful, clever addition to the Pixar canon.

Now looking forward to Pacific Rim. Mongo like monster movie.

Finally...

Have to add a postscript here – as you many of you know, Oklahoma got slammed around like an old rag doll in the month of May and the results were awful. Within a month’s time, my friend Howard Pollack put together a fund raising concert within the confines of my sainted University of Oklahoma football stadium which featured a return to performing from GarthBrooks, as well as sets from Toby Keith (the instigator of the show in that Moore, Oklahoma is his hometown), Willie Nelson, Sammy Hagar and many others. It was a day of incredible generosity and healing. Tickets were $25.00, 75,000 were sold and everyone worked for free. I didn’t know what national resonance came from this event, but I wanted to take the time, as one who was close to the production, to publicly thank all concerned.

Seriously, is there anything more gloriously American than the singing cowboy? A white hat-wearing, square-jawed male specimen equipped with a sharp aim, a stout heart and a dramatic tenor, the performance of which would cause even a tone deaf villain to tip his hat?

We seem to have the singing cowboy on our minds here in Oklahoma – Roy and Dale were actually married in Davis, and Ol’ Gene has an entire town that bears his moniker – the only such in America named for a movie star.

But today it is not of the first team we speak – no, our long legged guitar pickin’ men also enjoyed “B” picture status and played for teams bearing names such as Monogram. We speak today of Oklahoma born Jimmy Wakely, whose cinematic exploits have recently been released in wonderful box sets from Warner Archive.

Jimmy Wakely was from Rosedale, Oklahoma and became fast friends with my grandfather from Wayne, Oklahoma… Louie Westervelt Beck. So close were they that, as Jimmy moved up in showbiz to become a celebrity featured singer on Oklahoma City’s WKY radio, the future six-gun singer returned and traveled the 45 or so miles back to his hometown as a campaigner for my grandfather when he ran – and won – a seat in the Oklahoma legislature.

But the likes of the SoonerState couldn’t hold Wakely much longer, and after some career advice from Mr. Autry (he to whom they all aspired), who had heard the lad over the Oklahoma airwaves, headed west and never returned. Ah, but that is not the end of the Wakely/Beck legacy.

My grandfather was an officer in a JAG detachment stationed in southern California , not far from where Wakely and his family lived. Over this time, my mother and uncle were ill prepared for the movie magic that followed this fellow who had at one time been “Uncle Jimmy” – suddenly, there’s Johnny Mack Brown and Monte Hale and Rex Allen milling around the house. Also, next door was Andrew Slye, whose son, Leonard, was known by the name of Roy Rogers. My uncle each week would buy the latest comic books starring these silver screen icons and have them signed. Of course, no one can find them now. My mother, who was friends with Wakely’s daughter Linda, also got to go on tour with the singer.

I think all of us have some sort of relationship or family story regarding folks in the movies. My hometown of Purcell, Oklahoma, also gave us the woman – name unknown – who took that slap for Anne Baxter at the delivery of Erich Von Stroheim in Five Graves to Cairo. And it’s also somewhat ironic that I have a very strong relationship with a cowboy singer who also acts.

Lash LaRue

OK – here’s a story regarding yet another matinee icon who was, at the time this takes place, a tad over the hill.

My job throughout the early part of the 90s was to produce a local television show called Discover Oklahoma which featured travel destinations from around the state. Through this position, I became friendly with many local civic leaders; none more so than those who ran a community some 30 minutes north of Oklahoma City called Guthrie.

Guthrie, which has maintained many of its pre-statehood buildings, once was the homestead of perhaps the first big cowboy star – Tom Mix. In celebration of that relationship, the town would host, each year, a “Tom Mix Festival” that would bring in several cowboy actors. The year of which I speak, I think that The Virginian star Doug McClure was to have been there.

For whatever reason – I think he had just been diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually cause his death – McClure, at the last minute, had to cancel being Grand Marshall of the Tom Mix parade, as well as serving as the keynote speaker at a banquet attended by the elite citizenry of Guthrie. The town was crestfallen and its leadership called me to see if I had some last minute replacement thoughts.

By absolute kismet, I was watching a local morning news show the day before these non-McClure hosted events were to take place, when I heard that an upcoming guest was Lash LaRue.

Could I be dreaming? I called the local station who said he was appearing in promotion of a local gun show. I quickly called the powers that be in Guthrie and pronounced myself a savior – I would deliver unto them a “name above the title” western star who would most certainly fill the bill and then some.

I got permission to negotiate with La Rue and made my way to the gun show, where I found our hero dressed in black… well, ok… hung over and smelling, shall we say, ripe. I quickly introduced myself and made the offer. After checking his schedule, LaRue almost immediately agreed, a deal was made, and statues of yours truly were being planned in Guthrie.

I don’t remember why, but I couldn’t be at any of the festivities. But, believe me, I got an earful on that Monday.

Apparently, Mr. LaRue snarled at children and old ladies during the parade, and – in a banquet hall filled with a band of do-gooders – had about twelve shots in a row and announced to the throng that he completely believed that Jesus Christ was crucified four or five times.

This story is not to speak ill of Mr. LaRue, who, I think, lived a hard life. No, the stooge in this story is actually writing it.

That Reminds Me

Thought I would also answer my trivia question from last time. Remember? I had wondered for years who Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich had in mind when they wrote the original post-Last Picture Show script that became the novel (written solely by McMurtry) called Lonesome Dove. Remember… it was to star John Wayne who had, at that time, recently won an Oscar for True Grit and was starring in Rio Lobo, James Stewart, then in Fools’ Parade and Henry Fonda, who was between Once Upon a Time in the West and My Name is Nobody. Who was to play Woodrow Call, Augustus McRea or Jake Spoon? John Wayne was to be Call, Stewart was to be Gus and Fonda was supposed to play Spoon – parts that were later played by Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall and Robert Urich.

On Video

Each year, we here at The Bits nominate the best Blu-ray and DVD box sets and so forth, and I don’t imagine there will be a better set than No Pryor Restraint: Life in Concert, a seven CD, two DVD box set released by Shout! Factory which features 12 hours of prime Pryor from 1966-1992. There are the seminal stand up films, a large mishmash of all Pryor’s comedy albums and rare, unseen standup footage. Owning this is a must.

Twilight Time has achieved one of their finest Blu-ray restorations with the fabulous Technicolor film noir Leave Her to Heaven, released in 1945 with Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain and many others. This picture, as tawdry as ever was made, is so stunning in its outdoor color shots (Oscar winning) that several times I paused the disc to look at them as though they were museum-hung works of art. The disc package includes commentary with Daryl Hickman (in the films as well) and noted historian/critic Richard Schickel and, as is usually the case with Twilight Time, an isolated score track. Also this month is the 1993 Oscar winning film Philadelphia with a bunch of extras, including commentary by Jonathan Demme. (Reviewed here at The Bits by our own Adam Jahnke.)

Three new MOD discs from Warner Archive? How about the classic boardroom melodrama Executive Suite, with William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Frederic March and many, many more; A Big Hand for the Little Lady, a terrific Sting-like western with Joanne Woodward, Henry Fonda and Jason Robards, and Cruising, one of the most interesting films of the 80s, directed by a newly resurgent William Friedkin and starring Pacino.

In Theaters

Here’s a word you don’t hear enough of when describing new films – fun. Iron Man is a gloomy gus, Captain Kirk et al are saving the universe, while all around America four magicians of various specialties are recruiting to pull a magical, stupefying heist in Now You See Me, one of the great sleepers I’ve seen in a while.

You know that, really, truly there is no such thing as a “sleeper” anymore, right? Every picture is so merchandised and package that there is very little left for the audience to discover on its own. Only the very dumb would pass up the chance to see this exciting, keep ‘em guessing thriller. Oh, that’s right… they’re in seeing After Earth.

My friends and I used to play drinking games based on lines from the immortal Blazing Saddles and, usually, as we were about to be thrown out of one of the lesser establishments, my pal John Beebe, in his cups after about 12 screwdrivers, would stop all proceedings and yell, “I’ll now be reading from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and… Duck!”

I mention this now, because of a specific reaction to a long held statement that I’ll make anywhere, anytime.

I believe that one Gary Busey, admittedly a friend of mine, is a wonderful raconteur, an Oscar nominated actor of great skill… and an all around good guy.

Duck!

While some people seem to think that Gary was… well, hatched… he was in fact born in Texas and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he became part of a legendary late night local television show there called The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting, with another terrific Oklahoma performer who made it to the big time, Gailard Startain.

Here’s a great, pre-stardom, I’ll-do-anything-to-be-in-show-business story about Gary…

There was once an act that would play the rodeo circuit called “Rhesus McKack,” which was a tiny monkey who would wear a little cowboy suit and then was tied to the back of a bucking broncho’s tail. If it sounds like animal cruelty, it probably was, however the real story here is Gary acting out his involvement in the act, which was to get the suit off of that monkey after he had ridden around the rodeo arena. Watching Gary’s replay of this is one of the two or three funniest things I’ve ever seen a human perform. I think about it now and start to laugh.

From there, Gary hit Hollywood and immediately fell in love with the southern California lifestyle. Actually, he arrived in the movie industry when many legends were still working steadily and he was thrilled to get to know people like Cary Grant, Groucho Marx and Robert Ryan. He made friends with many terrific stars, both from the present and past, and appeared in some wonderful 70s movies like Lolly-Madonna XXX, The Last American Hero, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Straight Time and Big Wednesday. Of course, he was nominated for an Oscar for The Buddy Holly Story.

Here’s my favorite story from Gary’s early acting career…

It seems as though he had been cast in an episode of Baretta with none other than perhaps the greatest character actor of all time – Strother Martin. As the crew was setting up, Busey, who was to play Martin’s criminal son, sheepishly asked the veteran actor to read lines. “Let’s do it in my trailer,” Martin said, in a voice that sounded like a mixture of Ann Richards and Paul Lynde. The two began going over lines from their bound scripts.

Gary: “Hey dad, where are we going to stash the car?”

Strother: “Out behind the barn.”

Busey noticed that as soon as Martin’s line was over he immediately whipped himself around to look at a mirror that had been strategically placed on a far wall.

Gary: “Then what will we do?”

Strother: “We’ll set it on fire!”

Again, Martin whipped around to his left and looked in the mirror off to the side.

After several minutes of this, Gary finally asked why the famed character actor was making such an effort to see his reflection, to which Strother Martin replied:

“I always want to see if I actually believe myself when I say lines!”

Another part of the same incident took place later as the two continued on.

Gary: “We’ll hide behind the bush like a shomalon…”

Strother: “Shomalon? The word is chameleon. You moron.”

Some of you might remember that Gary played the legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant in a picture called The Bear, which was shuffled into theaters long enough for me to see it and hasn’t been in any public realm since. Gary says it’s due to foreign investment, but who knows? Either way, as is Busey’s standard S.O.P., he got to know the character he was playing very well. Here’s a story Bear Bryant himself told to Gary…

One time there was an annual post season meeting of SEC coaches and Bryant, being the dean of said bunch, showed up hours late. As he threw his briefcase on the table, the lock popped and a bottle of Old Grandad rolled out of the case and landed on the floor, shattering and soaking the carpet with double rectified busthead. (Always wanted to say that – it’s from True Grit.)

“Damn it, those were my notes!” Bryant said.

Here’s one more Busey story, which takes place during the filming of the now classic cult film Carny, produced by musician Robbie Robertson…

While it was a thrill for both actor and producer that they had been fortunate enough to cast legendary character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. in a pivotal role, Cook, who was getting on in years, had somewhat of a reputation as a black-out drunk, who would hold up shooting for weeks at a time when he was binge drinking. At first there were absolutely no problems, however, after shooting for about a month, Cook failed to show up to the set for two days. Aside from being concerned for the great actor’s well being, Robertson was especially miffed that he had lost two days of shooting and was concerned that, now that a precedent had been set, Cook would continue this particular behavior.

“I’ll show him who’s boss,” Busey said, as he stomped over to the diminutive actor’s director’s chair.

“Elisha, we all love you here and love what you’re doing in this movie, but if you miss one more day because your drunk, I’m coming to your room and break that bottle over your head and lead you out by your shoes and embarrass you in front of all the cast and crew, and then I’m going to pick up the phone and call your wife to come up here and get you.”

Cook, who made a career out of looking scared, made his most frightened face ever and, with sheer terror in his voice, said this to Busey:

“Please for the love of God don’t tell my wife!”

Being in physical proximity to Gary Busey is a trip – he’s deaf as a post, smells of reeking, foul cigars, yells just to hear himself talk and will wrestle you to the ground or put you in a bone crunching headlock. And he’ll just say anything – one of his “Busey-isms” or any other disgusting thought – that crosses his mind.

I love him. I’ll tell you more one day.

On Another Note…

I have another quick story/trivia question for that I’ll leave on the floor until next time…

I once spent a week with Larry McMurtry, one of America’s greatest writers. Many of you might know that his novel Lonesome Dove was originally a screenplay, written along with Peter Bogdanovich, immediately after their successful collaboration of The Last Picture Show.

I had always heard that the lead parts in Lonesome Dove, had been written for John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda. Now, here’s the question I asked McMurtry – which actor was supposed to play which character? The John Wayne of Red River could have played Call, but the John Wayne of True Grit could have played Gus. The Jimmy Stewart of Winchester ‘73 could have played Call but the Jimmy Stewart of The Cheyenne Social Club could have played Gus. And Henry Fonda could have easily played any of the three.

So how do you think McMurtry answered? Chew this one over and I’ll give the answer next week.

New on DVD

Those who have been with me since the beginning know that my favorite cartoon character is Popeye and – as though it was created just for me – Warner Home Video several years ago put out all the original early 30s black and white theatrical shorts in order. They were, and are, sublime.

Now, Warner Archive has released the color Popeye cartoons made specifically for television in the 60s. For those of us “Popeye-itis” it’s a must have and, while the cartoons aren’t nearly as elaborate as those originals, seeing Wimpy eat a hamburger off of the needle of a space ship is a special kind of thrill. Do check them out.

Also from Criterion this month comes two of the greatest westerns ever made – Jubal and the original 3:10 to Yuma – directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford. 3:10 is a special treat with, I have to mention, strong Oklahoma connections – story author Elmore Leonard lived here for a piece and majestic character actor Van Heflin was born in Walters.

Finally, Shout! Factory has released Mel Brooks: Make a Noise – the American Masters special on the legendary comic – with interviews with everybody from Carl Reiner to Nathan Lane to Joan Rivers. It’s well worth your time.

In Theaters

Three pictures of prime substance, terrific storytelling and strong characterizations have made their way into my local multiplex…

The Company You Keep, is Robert Redford’s first acting/directing output in forever and the movie is so subtle, so deliberate and so… well… political, that one wonders how the old boy still has it in him. But there he is, running through the upstate New York woods and pushing that fabulous blond hair off of his steely-eyed, 76 year old face. It’s just wonderful to see him back on the big screen, along with a righteous cast that includes Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon, Chris Cooper, Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Richard Jenkins and Brendan Gleeson.

There’s also room in movie heaven for A Place Beyond the Pines, a blacker than black modern noir from Derek Cianfrance, director of Blue Valentine. Maybe at 140 minutes it’s a tad too long for people who don’t have the patience to let a picture develop, but I thought it a compelling journey into our collective dark souls.

However, the picture of which we must truly discuss is Mud, a movie that I have recommended to so many of my friends that it’s starting to look as though I’ve got a piece of it.

Directed by Jeff Nichols, who made perhaps the most underrated picture of last year, Take Shelter, Mud is an absolutely wonderful (gasp!) family movie that tells its story without any cheap dramatics or clichéd characters. People will talk about this picture as though it’s a breakthrough for Matthew McConaughey, and he’s just south of fabulous, but the true heart of Mud are its two young leads, Tye Sheridan (who was equally as effective in Tree of Life) and Jacob Loflad who play best friends in a small Arkansas town confronted with life altering adventure.

Actually, Mud reminds me of the work of Horton Foote, as in specifically Tender Mercies – the picture isn’t necessarily period specific (there are no cell phones here at all) and, by the end, we’re breathless from the ride on which we have been taken.

While again any cast would have succeeded in Mud, I must mention that it is thrilling to see the great Joe Don Baker back in the bad guy saddle and also a nice part for a young Oklahoma actor named Paul Sparks, easily recognized after his three seasons of Boardwalk Empire.

Speaking of other films, so much has been written about Iron Man 3 that it’s almost redundant to mention it at all. It’s dreary, confusing and maddening, helped only by a nice Ben Kingsley turn and a song from my friend Dwight Yoakam in a bar scene. There’s much better news to report however on Star Trek Into Darkness which is, I think, to this series reboot what The Wrath of Khan was to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It’s just a fantastic action adventure and I hope there are many more to come.

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A couple of things in closing…

I'm very proud of our very own Oklahoma film festival – deadCENTER – which will be held June 5-9 here in Oklahoma City. (You can visit the official website here.) We have a wonderfully active film community here in Oklahoma and I’m thrilled to have played a part in its creation. deadCENTER has been named by MovieMaker magazine as one of the top 20 “Coolest” festivals in the world and I certainly agree.

Also, I’m proofing this piece on May 20, the same day of the devastating tornado that hit on the south side of our town. Sadly, Oklahoma is getting used to this level of catastrophe, but it sure doesn’t help right now. Thanks to all those of you who have checked in with me.

]]>budelder@thedigitalbits.com (Bud Elder)View from the Cheap SeatsThu, 23 May 2013 15:06:59 -0700More From the Cheap Seats: Jonathan Winters, Major Dundee and Oblivionhttp://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/more-from-the-cheap-seats-winters-dundee-oblivion
http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/view-from-the-cheap-seats/more-from-the-cheap-seats-winters-dundee-oblivion

I see now, somewhere in that great beyond, a randy, bewigged Maude Frickert chasing after a younger farm hand of hers with salacious activities on her mind, or Elwood P. Suggins screaming to his wife regarding the landing of a flying saucer “Don’t run, Martha, that’s what they want you to do!” or spoiled brat Chester Honehyhugger crying to his parents that “sissy has Spotty the dog, so I want a kitty,” or the Hollywood stuntman who had his head “completely turned around on his shoulders 13 times,” or the country songwriter who just penned a song for Pat Boone entitled “I’m On a Chartered Bus Going Nowhere” or any one of thousands of regular Americans whose personalities and extreme behaviors all came from the mind of, in my humble opinion, the greatest humorist of my time – Jonathan Winters.

I’m sure there are also sound effects galore, from a flying saucer landing, to a German Shepard barking, to a bullfrog belching to a an Indian arrow being shot at an unaware cowboy.

Jonathan Winters will never really be gone – even in the past several years he recorded a terrific new comedy album to add to the many he has released, many on the old Verve label, plus his appearances on such television programs as The Tonight Show and The Dean Martin Show are surely preserved for DVD release, however, with Jonathan, you always wanted more, as it was a very safe bet that almost anything that came out of his mouth was not only funny, it was quite possibly going to be the funniest thing you ever heard in your life.

I was raised on the humor of Jonathan Winters. My parents had records and he would be on TV pretty consistently – I think he even had his own CBS show on Saturday nights then – and then, about ten years ago, I got to meet him.

I was in L.A. when I saw that Ray Courts, who I had met through Dale Robertson, was hosting an autograph show at the Beverly Garland in Burbank. I popped by and Ray showed me the list of who was attending the next day, Jonathan’s name, ending with a “W” was the last on the list.

“Is he really coming for sure?,” I asked Ray, because I couldn’t stand the thought of being so close and him not show.

“You never know with Jonathan,” he said. “He really wakes up in a new world every day.”

I couldn’t sleep that night and was at the show as early as possible the next day and there he was goofing around with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. I stayed and watched him in the background all day and it was as though he was in the guest chair on Johnny Carson – he was never “off” and absolutely made me howl. Finally, I got the nerve to introduce myself and when I told him I was from Oklahoma , he immediately, of course, mentioned Will Rogers, then made a quite obscene play on the phrase “Never met a man I didn’t like.” It was a wonderful day. And, of course, I didn’t have a camera.

If you think about, Jonathan Winters was perhaps the sweetest comedian American ever produced. Unlike many comics, Winters didn’t come from a place of anger. When Maude Frickert, as a kindergarten teacher, is hit by a clay bunny thrown at her by a young student – her reply was. “Normally, I’d throw that back at you (pause) and, what the heck, I think I’ll do it anyway.”

I’m no National Enquirer, but I heard one too juicy to pass up, from a very highly regarded film producer in L.A… while Tom Hanks is currently on Broadway, his agents are desperately trying to find him a next project. It seems nobody will hire him. After Larry Crowne and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I don’t know that I would either. I trust this rumor 1,000 percent.

On Video

Out of all the fabulous product that has found their way out of the secret labs at Twilight Time Home Video, and that includes such DVD and Blu-ray finds as The Kremlin Letter, Lost Horizon and Violent Saturday, maybe the most important is their newest release, Major Dundee, Sam Peckinpah’s follow up to Ride the High Country and a lead in to The Wild Bunch.

This package, which includes Blu-ray versions of the original cut, and who knows what that really means, and a restored version with 11 extra minutes of the original cut that is probably the closest we’ll ever come to a cohesive version of this film. It’s like The Magnificent Ambersons and other ‘what could have beens” – the movie is most certainly a mere shadow of what it could have been, however, it’s still better than 90% of what was released as adult westerns at the time.

I’m beginning to maybe re-think Charlton Heston as an actor and as a fighter for the right causes – he fought for both Orson Welles in Touch of Evil and Peckinpah here, even relinquishing his salary in order to better the picture.

As for Peckinpah, Major Dundee follows all but a few of his pictures in that someone other than the great director finished what had been started. Peckinpah himself, speaking in “Peckinpah, the Western Films,” by Paul Seydor, said Major Dundee was the “story of the making of a great officer.” Seydor himself says that Major Dundee and Pike Bishop, William Holden in The Wild Bunch, are “both someone triumphing over failure to become the man he imagines himself to be.”

Our final word on Major Dundee comes from my movie mentor Dr. Jerry Holt, himself a Peckinpah scholar –

“Only he who has failed greatly can achieve greatly,” Herman Melville said – and Sam Peckinpah’s 1965 film Major Dundee may indeed prove Melville’s words. It seems to be the trial-by-fire the director had to go through to get to make his greatest achievement – The Wild Bunch (1969).

Indeed, Dundee has many elements that will carry to the later film – questions of loyalty and honor are at its core; the relationship between Dundee and Tyreen is an earlier version of the more excruciating one between Pike Bishop and Deke Thornton – and of course the entire theme of keeping a fraying bunch together in the heat of action looms large in both films.

We will never know what Dundee might have been, because Peckinpah lost control of the project – and largely due to his own abrasiveness. The popular notion of Peckinpah as renegade director vying with pompous studio shirts is now an important part of his legacy – but part of that is a Print the Legend matter.

I interviewed Charlton Heston in Oklahoma City during the early 80s, and though the actor was still devoted to Peckinpah’s obvious genius, he was less impressed with the director’s own ability to hold a ragtag bunch in the form of a movie company in Mexico together. “Too many fits; too much ego,” he said. But again – perhaps the best way to measure the Dundee experience is to look at the tightly controlled film that is The Wild Bunch. There were studio battles on that one, too – but there is no doubt about the result: The Wild Bunch is the most auteur of American films – every frame says Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Few of his contemporaries – perhaps Altman or Malick – could say as much. If Dundee was the price to pay for The Wild Bunch, it was well worth it.

Recently, a Las Vegas Sun poll listed the top 20 entertainers in Sin City and number one was, mild surprise, Liberace and a new DVD Everything’s Liberace from Timeless Media includes shows taped before a live audiences in London in the 1960s. Also in this set are guests George Gobel, Minnie Pearl, Eva Gabor, Jack Benny, Larry Storch and many more.

In Theaters

Cinemark Theaters is currently offering a truly once in a lifetime chance to experience legendary films that haven’t been first run in theaters for many years. Called “Cinemark Classics,” these play exclusively in Cinemark theaters every Wednesday, with showings at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. Throughout the month of May, the chain will be showing The Graduate on the 1st, Alien on the 8th and Blazing Saddles on the 15th. I recently took a neophyte to a screening of The Godfather at our local Tinseltown theater and was blown away both by the quality of the picture (in their Cinemark XD) and the classic film buffs who all stayed around afterward to discuss the picture. Go to cinemark.com for more information.

Oblivion

As one sits through the sonorous new sci-fi film Oblivion, waiting with hopeful heart for one original thought or character to make in appearance, it becomes obvious that Tom Cruise has lost any respect he ever had with his audience, who, by now, won’t accept him in any other part than a one dimensional man of action. Could you really imagine, at this point in his career, Tom Cruise as an everyman fighting city hall, as a husband, as a father? Not happening and probably won’t ever again, and so, if he’s any kind of actor at all, he has to feel like he’s getting the short end of the stick and, hence, he makes ridiculous movies like Oblivion.

Thank goodness it’s my policy to never do a plot rehash when I review a movie, because I couldn’t describe this one using semaphores. He’s with a lady and their on a planet and water is being used for energy on another planet and Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo are disastrously wasted and then there’s somewhat of a plot twist that anyone who has seen every science fiction movie since, er Blade Runner, can see coming from a mile away and then, thankfully, mercifully, it’s over.

I would be interested in seeing who all had their fingerprints on the script for Oblivion, (here’s a statement that won’t be heard in Hollywood for a long time – “Our first choice for this part is Tom Cruise!”) – after Pee Wee Herman turned it down, producers finally said “Let’s get the midget!”

I have taught college composition courses my whole life and it is not uncommon for the curriculum to ask the student to write a true story from their individual pasts. When they collectively start bellyaching that their lives are boring and that they have no well from which to draw any autobiographical tales, I tell them one thing – everyone has stories.

And, while most of mine are of humorous intent, as I’m one to collect characters who revel in stupidity, you’ll find that I have some that breathe some serious fire and, in this case, one that has haunted me for years and has, very recently, been back in the forefront of our culture due to a brand new HBO film.

During football season in 2002 (as you’ll also notice that my calendar year begins and ends with the University of Oklahoma football team) my friend Gray Frederickson called me to have lunch. I had recruited Gray from Beverly Hills to assist the state of Oklahoma as it went after Hollywood productions, and we were always up to something in that regard. This time he told me that an actress friend of his was coming to Oklahoma City to visit him, recharge her batteries and think about what she wanted to do next in her professional endeavors.

I got her booked into a local hotel and met her the very next day. While she had appeared as a lead in several Roger Corman pictures in the 80s and 90s and while, in her late 30s, she was staggeringly beautiful, the actress understood that there was indeed a “shelf life” on the type of characters that she could play, so she decided that she wanted to go into, of all things, stand up comedy.

Tracy Ullman was a particular hero of hers, so she decided to do “character comedy,” which meant she would create characters a la Saturday Night Live and inhabit them, in all makeup, on stand up stages in comedy clubs. She wanted help creating the characters and writing their material. I called one of my best friends named Rick Walker, who is the number morning host in the Oklahoma City market and a someone who is naturally funny to his shoelaces (By the way, Rick is also an excellent filmmaker, you can get on Netflix Sam and Janet, which he wrote and directed and which stars Gary Busey and a horror film called The Fun Park.). They hit it off immediately and, I think, worked every afternoon for almost a week. Who wouldn’t want to work with her – she was so grateful for the help and, I can’t say this enough, ethereal to look at.

I think she stayed in Oklahoma City from between ten days and two weeks before heading back to L.A. to assemble her material, maybe even shoot a television pilot, and then, eventually trying these characters out in front of audiences.

I do remember, very well, the last time I saw her. It was later on Sunday evening and, as my wife and son were occupied, I invited her to a quick dinner. When she came to the lobby of the hotel, she was a vision. Black leather pants with a black leather jacket and tall heels. She had about five or six inches on me.

We had a wonderful dinner then I took her back. As she was leaving the next morning, she thanked me for the little I had done for her and gave me a big hug. Guys like me never forget hugs from girls like her.

Over the next several months, I’d ask Gray if she had been in contact and always got the latest news pertaining to her. Then one day, after the first of the year, I didn’t need to ask Gray about her because it was all over the news. She was dead. By a fatal gunshot wound that could have possibly been self inflicted. And that her final seconds were spent in the house of legendary music producer and well known creep Phil Spector.

Her name, as you have probably guessed, was Lana Clarkson.

So, now comes the HBO picture Phil Spector, written and directed by David Mamet. Not to give anything away, but the picture does leave one to believe that Lana committed suicide (actually, Gray was on the original witness list for the state to testify that she was nowhere near suicidal due to her excitement over her new comedy act) and that Specter, despite years of dangerous, crazy behavior towards women, was, in fact innocent. Actually the movie plays out like one of Mamet’s stage works, a dream like fantasia of the entire case with Al Pacino, as Specter, wandering in and out of the film like a feverish nightmare.

I have to grant the film artistic license; however, there is a snippet of a scene that boiled my hide. Jeffrey Tambor (as famed mob lawyer Bruce Cutler, who actually works in my brother’s building in New York, and Helen Mirren are the meat and potatoes of Specter’s defense team. At one time they are in front of a television monitor watching an actress playing Lana doing her “comic characters” – an ex hippie and a straight from the 70s black dude. Both attorneys watch her trying very hard to be funny and make sport of her efforts. I, knowing what she went through to get to that stage in her life, was offended.

I’m not saying that I really knew Lana Clarkson – she was in my life for two weeks, then we talked on the phone several times after that, however, when she was with me she breathed delight and was a very intelligent, charming and lovely woman. For those who wouldn’t necessarily know Lana from her brief film work, there is a website www.lanaclarkson.com dedicated to her memory.

Being There

Now for something a little less serious – my friend Gray, after a very successful association with Francis Coppola, was hired to be an executive at Lorimar film productions. Lorimar, you might remember was heavy into television production in the 70s and 80s (Dallas, The Waltons etc) and decided to go into film productions. There are lots of great stories about the films made during this time by Lorimar (The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh?!?) but here’s one of my favorites.

When director Hal Ashby was attached to a film version of the Jerzy Kosinsky novel Being There, there was apparently great anticipation regarding the casting of the lead role Chance. As most film buffs know, the part went to the late, great Peter Sellers and it could be argued that his was one of the great performances in all of American film. Like, maybe, George C. Scott in Patton or Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, it is impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Sellers took his ability to lose himself into a character to a new level – Gray said that Sellers used to call him every night in a different character voice – and the result was, well, inevitable, precious. Being There was the last film released while Sellers was alive and, although he lost the Best Actor award to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs Kramer, we all know who delivered the best performance that year or, for that matter, maybe of all time.

Now here’s the kicker – Gray ardently protested against the casting of Sellers and, as the film was not a box office success, argues today that his selection would have made the picture a hit. Gray’s idea for the lead in Being There? A new and upcoming, at the time, comedian, who had as yet made a feature film – zany, arrow through the head, Steve Martin.

On Video

Raise your hand if you remember when the box office was ruled by a young actor, straight from the Broadway stage, Elliott Gould. Otherwise known as Mr. Barbra Streisand, Gould, who many designated the lead player in the counter culture war film M*A*S*H. From that landmark film, Gould was cast as a new breed of anti hero in many pictures through the early 70s.

During this time period, he re teamed with Robert Altman, who directed M*A*S*H in a then modern day version of Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye,” playing detective Philip Marlow. My favorite scene in the picture is Gould at his best and, knowing how Altman worked, was probably ad libbed. While Marlow is sniffing around in some office or something, a security guard approaches and asks “Hey, who are you?” – then, without missing a beat, Gould says “Sidney uh Jenkins.” My brother and I both use the name Sidney Jenkins when our own won’t suffice.

Some of Gould’s other great films include Harry and Walter Go to New York and The Silent Partner, each on DVD.

Like almost all actors who start out in a flash of fire, Gould faded as a leading man. You still see him around in movies like Bugsy, Ocean’s 11 and American History X and when he appears on screen he still carries the devilish charm and acute smugness that made him a star in the first place.

The reason for all this drivel is that our friends at Warner Archive have released two of Gould’s pictures Whiffs, a M*A*S*H wannabe and I Will I Will for Now, co starring Diane Keaton.

Also on Warner Archive is one of the great misfires of all time. Imagine a fictional film about a dysfunctional White House, with Bob Newhart as the president, Madeline Kahn as the first lady, Gilda Radner as the first daughter and Richard Benjamin, Bob Dishy, Harvey Korman, Rip Torn and Fred Willard as the first staff. Written and directed by Buck Henry, the picture is called First Family and you probably need to see it just to realize that something with that much talent involved can be so terrible. Also available from Warner Archive.

Let’s talk about Olive Films, which is releasing terrific classic films in blu ray right and left – this month there are four rarities in particular – Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park, Anthony Mann’s film noir Strangers in the Night, Sam Fuller’s China Gate and Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in the film adaptation of William Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize winning novel Ironweed. I’ll be discussing these in depth as I watch, but go to olivefilms.com to see their entire catalog.

At the Theater

Spring Breakers is like a perverted version of Our Gang. When Spanky et al were given some funny business or a cute line, the director would repeat it to them over and over until they could memorize it, they would quickly, lest the child forget, film a close up of the actor repeating the rehearsed line, then the editor would splice the joke into the middle of the action. I think that’s how Harmony Korine, a cult director aiming for the big time, must have achieved coherency with the four young Disney girls playing the heroines in this picture. He would tell them a line five or six times then goose them so that they would repeat it without either belching or hiccupping.

Our plot here tells the woeful tale of four bikini wearing college freshwomen who decided that, in order for them to travel for spring break, they must rob a restaurant for spending money. Owning an eatery myself makes me wonder how a little dump like the one they heisted could cough up enough to get the getaway car out of the parking lot.

Once in Florida, they get arrested again, I think for just being too darn cute and a gold betoothed, braided hair wearing James Franco comes in just in time to start a gang war over drugs.

Spring Breakers really sort of had a chance –its vibrant out of focus images are colorful and Franco, slumming, looks as though he was Laurence Olivier stepping on the set of the Teletubbies. However, here’s what gets me – these new pictures, made before the last schoolyard shooting have zero sensitivity toward the gun issue. Especially in Spring Breakers, where every firearm is treated like a eyes not open yet puppy. Don’t filmmakers know that audiences with any sensitivity are getting queasy about constant gun violence?

At the end of our little adventure all of our princesses are left standing, while all around them are taking a dirt nap. Here’s an idea for a sequel – Spring Broke.

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Have to end with a funny story. A regular reader of The Bits, named Ken Williams discovered that he lived less than a mile from my restaurant and came in to see us… he’s also a fascinating fellow, he repairs movie projects, both film and digital, all over the country. You never know who you’re going to meet on The Digital Bits!

A few weeks ago, the AP wire and even Entertainment Weekly made the simple announcement that Dale Robertson, age 89, had died in southern California. And while the world had lost their western hero Jim Hardie and the state of Oklahoma, where he was born and would always remain faithful, had lost a favorite son, I lost a dear mentor, friend and brother.

Dale Robertson was perhaps the most un ambitious movie star of all time. Even at the height of his fame, he told all who would listen that he would work in Hollywood until he had enough money saved up to move back to his beloved SoonerState.

A World War II hero and recipient of a Purple Heart, a photograph of our handsome hero was on display in an L.A. photographer’s window when it was noticed by Harry Cohn, who asked Dale to test for the screen version of the popular play Golden Boy, which, of course, was given eventually to William Holden. His first movie was The Boy with the Green Hair, which was rather ironic in that Dale was a true conservative who wouldn’t have exactly been in agreement with the political statements of director Nicholas Ray. In quick succession, Dale was in Flamingo Road, with Joan Crawford and The Girl from Jones Beach which starred his friend for life, Ronald Reagan.

In a rare candid moment – Dale was not one to spill the beans – I asked him whether or not it was true that Joan Crawford (raised in Lawton, Oklahoma ) would dally with handsome young unknowns on her pictures. He answered “Whatever you think is true is probably what happened.” I never had the nerve to ask him point blank about his relationship to Marilyn Monroe, who was a young Fox contract player at the same time as he. Actually Dale’s first wife, little known fact, was film star Mary Murphy, she of The Wild One.

His first real break was in a Randolph Scott film called Fighting Men of the Plains, which is occasionally shown on TCM. Robertson then went on to sign a contract with Fox and was a leading man in some 20 pictures for the studio, predominately westerns. During this time he worked with great directors like Robert Wise (Two Flags West), Delmer Daves (Return of the Texan) and Henry Hathaway (O. Henry’s Full House).

In fact, Dale loved to tell a story about the first day of shooting on O. Henry.

“Upon our first meeting Henry Hathaway walked up and warned me that he might scream and holler at his actors but that it was all for the good of the movie and that he truly meant nothing by it,” Dale said. “I told him that I had a hard fast rule that any director that berated me in front of the cast would have his teeth knocked out. We became friends after that.”

Dale’s favorite of his pictures was The Gambler from Natchez. My favorite was City of Bad Men, wherein Dale and Richard Boone and some other bad guys are going to rob the take from the famed “Gentleman Jim” Corbett – Bob Fitzsimmons fight, before Dale’s character has a change of heart and stops his former outlaw partners.

After his contract with Fox ran out, Dale signed a three picture deal with Howard Hughes, who Dale had met through a mutual love of horses. According to Dale, Hughes called him at 3:00 in the morning to meet at the Santa Anita Race Track, where their movie deal was forged in the back of Hughes’ limo.

One result of this partnership was Dale’s lowest point in film, the Son of Sinbad, which should be watched at all costs. Hughes had gone all over the country promising local beauty queens parts in one of his pictures, then decided to make good by putting them all in Sinbad, where they each had one line when the action broke that went something like “Oh, Sinbad!”

Dale then moved to television and it was here that he would find his greatest fame in Tales of Wells Fargo, a program which Dale owned completely (one of the first stars to own his own series) and he would, uncredited, write and direct many episodes. He returned to television in The Iron Horse in the late sixties and then, many years later, he starred in J.J. Starbuck, written and produced by Stephen Cannell. He guest starred in Murder She Wrote and had continuing parts in both Dallas and Dynasty. By then he had made good on his promise to move back to Oklahoma , where he lived until the last month of his life. He also starred in the then highest rated television movie of all time The Kansas City Massacre, playing Melvin Purvis.

Here’s a great story from Wells Fargo.

“I was on the set when Spencer Tracy walked in,” Dale remembered. “He told me that he and ‘Kate’ never missed an episode and it would be a tremendous favor to him if I would call her at home to say hello. We talked for an hour – she was a woman of refined taste!”

Dale was quite a singer and recorded several albums. He was originally asked to take the lead in the Broadway production 110 in the Shade, a musical version of The Rainmaker, but he declined because of the two year commitment to live in New York. Music was a very large part of his life. His next door neighbor in Beverly Hills was the comic pianist Victor Borge and he had a huge library of first cassettes then CDs of classical music.

During the mid 60s, he independently financed a cartoon western called The Man from Button Willow and made some films oversees. He also turned down the Sergio Leone films that became the “Man with No Name” trilogy.

A mutual friend introduced Dale to me some years ago, and we bonded immediately. I wore him out with questions about this or that director or star and I think he appreciated someone really remembering the good old days. We also had a mutual interest in the University of Oklahoma football program – his cousin, Port Robertson, was the assistant head coach to Bud Wilkinson when the team had their unbelievable 47 game winning streak in the 1950s. He never missed a Sooner football game on television and, as former athlete, enjoyed all sports.

I traveled with Dale to many western film festivals up until the last three or four years of his life, to L.A., Vegas, Laughlin, Tombstone and other places. There he would meet with fans, sign autographs and spend time with his peers. At these shows, as well as the Golden Boot Awards in Beverly Hills, I was able to hang with buddies like Ernest Borgnine, Ann Miller, George Montgomery, Harry Carrey, Jr., L.Q. Jones, James Drury, Donna Martell, Dick Jones (the voice of Pinocchio), Monte Hale and many more. I loved their stories and I was honored to be with him.

I ate lunch with Dale in different Oklahoma City restaurants as often as three times a week. I never saw him be anything but gracious to his legion of local fans and he stopped any conversation any time to see children or a baby. I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. When I told him I had lost my mind and was opening a restaurant, he sent in a signed Australian daybill, autographed, from O. Henry’s Full House, to put on my wall.

One time I had the brilliant idea to bring in a highly popular local writer that would work with Dale on a biography. I took friends to back me up when I pitched the deal to him. He immediately said no. When I asked why, he said “because I don’t know how the story ends yet.”

Well, now actually we do know how it ended. And, while his legion of fans from all over the world will never forget Dale L. Robertson (we called him “Coach.” Don’t ask) we who knew and adored him were honored for the time spent in his company.

I’ll piecemeal out all the stories I have from my years with Dale and I’ll parcel them out over time.

On DVD

Follow my thought process here – I liken Turner Classic Movies, their channel and their brand, to Frank Sinatra. Here’s why. Sinatra never thought of a song as “old.” Even if it had been written thirty or forty years previously, he made the music as fresh as if it had just been penned. He treated each song so respectfully that they seemed vibrant, alive. I used to scream when people said, while he was still performing, “Frank Sinatra was great” because he was always so in the moment, no matter what age either he or his songs were.

It’s the same with TCM. They talk about movies as living, breathing things. Even films that were released as duds in the 30s are treated with such a sense of awe and wonder that one has to give them a look. I have friends who work there (their chief photographer is from Oklahoma City) and they are all movie buffs who seriously love their jobs.

The latest from the TCM Vault Collection is Glenn Ford: Undercover Crimes, which features five fully restored films which are brought to DVD for the first time. Of the five, The Lady in Question, Framed, Undercover Man, Mr. Soft Touch and Convicted, the real find is Undercover Man. Directed by the legendary Joseph L. Lewis, this is indeed a rare treat, and a marvelous noir. The others are all of merit as well and can be purchased exclusively through the TCM online store. Seriously, see Undercover Man.

Twilight Time has recently released The Fury, Christine and The Song of Bernadette. Sure we’ll review these later and I hear that Christine might already be sold out. Go to ScreenArchives.com to see all Twilight Time offers.

In Theaters

Oz: The Great and Powerful

In the late 30s, studios MGM and the Walt Disney Company were at their creative zeniths – MGM, who also had a small picture out about that time called Gone with the Wind, created The Wizard of Oz, with Judy Garland subbing in for a non contract player Shirley Temple and MGM stalwart Frank Morgan taking the role of the wizard from an unavailable W.C. Fields. Disney created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first all animated musical feature, in 1937, changing forever the way we look at movies.

How the mighty have fallen.

As quickly as you can say “hocus pocus,” Disney now has the rights to a hugely budgeted wide release picture called Oz: The Great and Powerful, while MGM is but a shell corporation, which, because of its purchase of United Artists in the 80s, is known to the public only through the new James Bond movies.

Oz: The Great and Powerful, Disney’s new film prequel to the 1939 MGM classic, is quick to disappoint on all fronts. How a modern studio, with all the money and talent in the world could obliterate the legacy of a group of malcontents off to see the wizard, along with those dreaded fields of poppies, heart rending songs, a skipped upon yellow brick road, and perhaps a little dog, too, is beyond comprehension.

Our director here, Sam Raimi, last made Spider-Man 3, which was enough to make one arachnophobic, and this picture doesn’t do much to assuage any hesitancy to see him take on another big budget film. His touch is one that avoids straightening out even the most general plot questions and the film is so uneven that one cannot guarantee either that it won’t scare the ever living gonads out of your kids or that said won’t fall asleep.

Our picture’s first ten or 15 minute segment is by far its best.

We meet Oscar Diggs, our “wizard,” in a two bit sepia toned Kansas carnival Oscar, nicknamed Oz, is a practitioner of prestidigitations with a specialty in charming demure coquettes. He is doing just that very thing when (take your pick, because the movie doesn’t say) a lover, father or brother of one such in hot pursuit, chases him into a convenient hot air balloon just in time to be sucked into an oncoming tornado, where he is then catapulted into the wonderful, and, oh yes, colorful land of Oz. Who knew he had it so good in Kansas? At least things there partially made sense.

There’s a prophecy involved once we’re fully ensconced in Oz, about a great wizard bearing the name of their city who will come to save those poor slobs by killing the wicked witch. There are here three sort of witches, the powers of each never fully explained, said for some razzmatazz green lightning coming out of their manicured fingers. So confusing and exasperating are these practitioners of the dark arts that we highly advise against any who have read the original Baum novels, where strong, imaginative women characters were the order of the day, buy a ticket at all.

To compare the original with this dreck is somewhat unfair. Disney has taken a true American classic and stomped on it like a foot at the end of a Monty Python skit. Nerve this picture has – all we’re missing, actually, is a little brain and lots of heart.

(with the assistance of Korey Anders)

Final Thoughts

Thanks for all the good words after my first turn at bat here on The Digital Bits. I would like to answer a question I received regarding a DVD of the 1977 William Friedkin film Sorcerer. On the fifth of March, Friedkin, who has a new biography coming out in April, tweeted this: “The long and twisted legal path of Sorcerer is slowly being unwound. Thanks for your patience. More as I get news.”

He also said on February 11: “The original negative is in good condition and it’s now being budgeted to make a new digital master.”

My name is Bud Elder and I’ve loved movies ever since I sold pickle juice at the Canadian Theater in downtown Purcell, Oklahoma in 1971. My first movie reviews were published in the Purcell Dragon student newspaper in 1975 and I took a class on Hitchcock film at a regional college between the summer of my high school graduation and the first semester at the University of Oklahoma.

Since then I have written, argued, critiqued, walked out of, championed and loved from the depths of my being the gum-bottomed theater seats and movies on pay television, VHS and Beta tapes, DVD and Blu-ray Discs, and now apps on my phone and Netflix streaming. Although it should be noted that the way I’ve explored and discovered new films, I keep going back to the seminal film critic Pauline Kael who (sort of) said, “There is nothing quite like the excitement one feels when the lights go down.”

As it happens, in 1995 some moron made me the film commissioner for the state of Oklahoma. It was, in effect, like turning Orson Welles loose with the Twinkies. While I was film commissioner, I founded at technical film degree program at a local community college and recruited my friend Gray Frederickson, producer of The Godfather trilogy as well as Apocalypse Now and others, to move back to Oklahoma from Beverly Hills to teach classes. I also brought to the school a new resident to the state named Fritz Kiersch to teach as well, who had directed a little horror picture called Children of the Corn. All of this has officially given me a love of movies that dares not speak its name.

I’ve followed The Digital Bits almost since its inception and have always been especially anxious to read the new Classic Coming Attractions columns by one Barrie Maxwell. When I had the opportunity to write a similar column, on a whim decided to contact Barrie to see how it was done. He was so helpful, interested and beguiling that we made fast email friends and remained so through his sickness and untimely death last year. As my 19 year old would say, “the dude knew his stuff.”

I plan to have a lot of fun here at The Bits with my new View from the Cheap Seats column. Each new installment will feature a mix of content, including interesting stories from my many years of association with the film industry and the folks in it (Tales from the Set), thoughts on new movies currently In Theaters and even updates on select Upcoming Classics on Blu-ray and DVD. I hope you’ll all enjoy it. And if you get the urge, feel free to send me an e-mail with your thoughts or just to say hello.

(Click READ MORE >> in the About Bud Elder box on the right side of the page and you’ll find your way to an e-mail form.)

- Bud Elder

Tales from the Set

For my first Tales from the Set, here’s a hum dinger of a story, told to me personally by two-time Oscar winning producer Albert S. Ruddy. And, while he never recounted the story exactly the same way over five or six different recitations, I’ll do my best to provide an amalgamation that has somewhat of the level of truth…

Producers Ruddy and Gray Frederickson were given production duties on The Godfather after their film Little Fauss and Big Halsey had been a hit for Paramount (more later about the origins of that legendary Francis Coppola film) and Ruddy arrived on the film’s New York City set to find that union members, sanitation workers and others of their like were on strike, under direct orders from the hierarchy of the local organized crime. This mind you was a group who was, naturally, particularly sensitive to the content being filmed on the streets of Little Italy.

After a day or two of total chaos, the studio was informed by representatives of Joseph Columbo, then head of the New York crime families, that the mob would like to have a sit down with the producers so that they might come to an amiable conclusion to the stalemate.

As Ruddy recalls, he soon met with Columbo and an associate, who carried the moniker of “Butter,” in a room at the Park Central Hotel in Times Square. Both men were dressed in dark suits and hats befitting gentlemen associated with their particular calling.

“Columbo was concerned that his chosen way of life, as well as the Italian experience in America, would be stereotyped [in the film] in a very unfavorable light,” Ruddy said. “To which I countered that, much to the contrary, Italians in The Godfather were portrayed as honorable and committed to family, while it was other ethnic groups, such as the Irish, that were shown to be corrupt.”

After going back and forth with the mobsters for a while, Ruddy came up with an idea.

“I told both of them to come back the next day, when I would have scripts laying on the table for us to go through page by page to prove my point,” he said. “They agreed and a second meeting was scheduled.”

At the appointed time, the boss and his henchmen returned to the Park Central and sat in front of bound scripts. With great flourish, Columbo took a pair of small reading glasses from a case in his pocket and opened the script.

“They both stared at Scene #1 for almost ten minutes,” Ruddy said. “Then Columbo took off his glasses, gently closed the script and said ‘We will support this movie as long as the word ‘Mafia’ is not used in any form or fashion.’”

Discerning viewers of The Godfather will notice that at no time is the word ‘Mafia’ uttered in the film.

In Theaters

In 1967, author Donald E. Westlake (working under the name Richard Stark), wrote The Hunter, the first of some 24 books featuring the character simply known as “Parker” – a no nonsense, anti-heroic professional thief who lives in a violent, dark world. The (mostly) paperback originals took low crime to high art. The movies almost immediately paid attention and John Boorman’s Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin as an inexplicably named “Walker” soon redefined the crime film genre. Except for a smarmy remake of Point Blank called Payback, starring Mel Gibson, and The Outfit, with Robert Duvall, Parker has been strangely absent from movie screens.

Now comes Jason Statham as Parker? In a film titled Parker? Directed by Taylor Hackford? Be still my beating heart! Sadly, the result is a stink bomb. What could have been a lean and mean adaptation of one of Stark’s later efforts, Flashfire, is instead a goofy mess, the kind of genre film that only Joel Schumacher could have made worse. Look, we saw, just this year, that a 70s crime novel – in this instance George V. Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade – could be made into a cogent, thoughtful and intelligent picture in Killing Them Softly. What they’ve done here is a travesty.

However, Parker isn’t a total dud. Michael Chiklis gives ‘em the old Vic Mackey charm as the lead villain and Statham, even if his Parker sounds more like Michael Caine than Lee Marvin, blasts a .45 with the best of them. Still, we all know to be slightly wary whenever a film get released in January… and Parker is as “January” as they get. Sigh. Maybe one day they’ll get it right.

Upcoming Classics on Blu-ray and DVD

Those of us who truly love classic films – we who still can’t get over the fact the good Lord created Turner Classic Movies – eagerly await new release day product from the Warner Archive as though it were new music from The Beatles. Whether it’s rarities from Bogart (Conflict), Cagney (Taxi) or Hannah Barbara cartoons, or more recent gems such as Wild Rovers, Mr. Ricco and The Boy Friend, Warner Archive is the king of all things MOD. Recently, Warner Archive has offered both seasons of the wonderful David Janssen cult detective series Harry O, HB’s cartoon take on Martin Short’s hilarious character Ed Grimley and the film series of fictional detective Philo Vance from the 1930s. Go to www.warnerarchive.com to check out the latest.

Perhaps the most unique purveyor of classic films on disc is Twilight Time, a company of which all classic film buffs should be intensely aware. Brian Jamieson and Nick Redman, both veterans of the motion picture and music industries, release only 3,000 units of two Blu-ray classics per month, most of which have never even be released on VHS. Titles such as The Kremiln Letter, Violent Saturday, the musical Lost Horizon, and the original Fright Night sell out almost the second they are released for pre-order. Lately, the group has put out the James Bond clone Our Man Flint, starring James Coburn, and Experiment in Terror, Blake Edwards’ thriller starring Glenn Ford. Coming soon too are Brian DePalma’s The Fury and John Carpenter’s Christine – though at this point you’ll have to try and find the latter on eBay, as it sold out within hours of going on sale. Visit www.screenarchives.com to jump on the wonderful Twilight Time band wagon.